On the Equestrian Calendar · 1:33am Nov 24th, 2013
I figure since I have a small smattering of followers, it's time I started presenting some of the things I've been working on and my thoughts on various matters. Seeing as this topic is related to all three of the story ideas I'm working on, I'd start here.
All three of my projects seem to revolve closely around the passage of time—one is set forward several years, one will take place over the course of several years, and one is set in a very narrow time frame. The other commonality being that they all seem to involve breaking established systems in Equestria and seeing what would result, but that's for another blog post. Anyway, there were two things I really needed to nail down before I could even get started. The first was a calendar that Equestria followed, and the second was a timeline for the canon events.
Ether Echoes got the calendar started with a side long comment one of his stories makes—the year starts on the winter solstice. It got me thinking... what would happen to the rest of the Equestrian year if its January 1st was our December 22nd? One spreadsheet later and suddenly a LOT of things in Equestria made sense to me. Starting the year on Earth's December 22nd actually makes the shift to spring in Equestria nearly coincide with Groundhog's Day. Our February 2nd is their February 15th, which not only places Winter Wrap-up square in the middle of the month, but also explains why Equestria's version of Valentine's Day happens in spring weather. To me, at least. From that basis, and with a little tweaking on the length of months that I'll explain in a bit, the Equestrian calendar manages to do two very important things for me (and my OCD). First, every Wrap-Up happens in the middle of a month, cleaning up each season and dropping the next. Second, every solstice and equinox happens on the transition between months. For example, the winter solstice happens on the transition between December and January, and the summer solstice, also known as the Summer Sun Celebration, happens on the transition between June and July. The only other two points of contention arise for the other two holidays ponies seem to observe; Nightmare Night, and the Running of the Leaves.
Now, Nightmare Night is a pretty obvious comparison to our own Halloween, so of course everyone wants to slot it on October 31st. In doing a little bit of research, however, I discovered that Halloween is largely descended from the Gaelic tradition of Samhain, among other types of harvest festivals. It's a festival to celebrate the last harvest of the season, as winterfall is right around the corner, but it was also seen as a time where the more liminal aspects of things would come out. Ghosts, goblins, and other ghoulish figures. For the last thousand years or so in Equestria's history, Nightmare Moon was THE ghoulish figure, so she naturally took center stage in that aspect. But the point isn't about what it's about, but when it's about—the end of autumn. Following my setup, that puts it somewhere in the range of November 5th to November 15th, because remember that each Wrap-Up is in the middle of a month. Just so happens that that's exactly when our Halloween happens anyway, if we correlate Earth's December 22nd to Equestria's January 1st. It becomes the last holiday of autumn, with Autumn Wrap-Up and winterfall right around the corner.
That just leaves the Running of the Leaves. Once again, I got a little help sorting this one out from Ether Echoes. The Running of the Leaves isn't Autumn Wrap-Up (or possibly Fall Wrap-Up, we haven't been given a name for it yet), and the reason I suspect as much is because there's a SUMMER Wrap-Up. For those of you who aren't in the know, that's Big Mac's issue of the MlP:FiM comic series. And before anyone pitches a fit, yes, I do consider those to be canon, so deal with it. So back to the Running of the Leaves. I (with the help of Ether Echoes) think that the Running is a country-wide holiday that occurs locally. Let me explain. The Running of the Leaves seems to me to be something ponies would do right before they dropped the snow on the ground. No sense in doing it any later since the leaves need to be under the snow in order to rot and return to the earth properly. So that puts it either as part of Autumn Wrap-Up or as some kind of precursor to it, but I've already said I don't consider it as part of Autumn Wrap-Up. It's a day long event. So the question becomes when before Autumn Wrap-Up does it happen, and I think that varies based on when a population center finishes its harvest season. Soon as the ground is bare, drop the leaves. Now, some people will complain about the idea of a migrating holiday, but I'd like to remind those people that our Earth (well, our United States) calendar already has several migrating holidays. Mother's Day, Father's Day, Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving being the most prominent, and I'm sure there are others, which makes me think the Running of the Leaves happens sometime before November 15th, but after November 1st.
Which just leaves the concept of my "tweaking" the lengths of months to make everything line up as it does. There's no way to evenly divide 365 (or even 366) days evenly into four seasons, so that right there is out the window from the very get go. There's going to be some discrepancy in the distribution of days. I started with the idea that each month would be thirty days long—a hold over from Egyptian times, I might state. Twelve months, three-hundred sixty days to three-hundred and sixty degrees, one full rotation around the sun. Not terribly complicated, if a little bit off. The Egyptian mythos of why there's three-hundred and sixty-five days is actually pretty interesting, but suffice to say I had five days to throw around to make things line up. Placing them in April, March, June, August, and September makes everything line up nice and neatly. Two spring days, one summer day, and two autumn days extra. Why would olden ponies want extra winter days? You couldn't do a bloody thing in winter in the olden times except wait for it to end. Well, that's where the leap day comes in—during the winter, tacked onto the very end of the year.
So that's the whole calendar situation fixed and handled. We'll see if the next pony holiday they throw at us screws it up or not.
And that all took way more words to explain than I thought it would, so I think I'll save my timeline theories and why they're both important for all the stories I'm writing for another blog post. But hey, gotta start somewhere, so I may as well start from the beginning.
Nice. You're right, that does make a lot more sense. I was mentally slotting a few of those holidays like that anyway, but taken as a whole, the whole thing fits together quite nicely.
Of course, I was wondering earlier what they did when the sun and moon are interfered with. Since the day/night cycle is apparently controlled, what happens in the event of something like the season 4 premiere? The festival happened anyway, did they just catch up the sun/moon and have the festival a day later but keep the calender?
Having a calender in a society where a demigod can adjust day and night on a whim is an interesting thing.
Still, neat post. You've earned a follow.
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So long as the stars don't get screwed with, astronomers can always help Celestia and Luna sync things back in place, assuming the cycle hasn't been disturbed for too terribly long...
...or it's at a time before astronomers knew what they were talking about! But that's the next blog post.
Why can't I favor blog posts like this, Fimfiction? WHY?
I think one detail you forgot is what year it might be.
Something else worth considering is that the writers seem pretty interested in having things measured in moons lately.
The portal to the human world opens every so many moons. The Seeds were supposed to sprout and capture Celestia and Luna thousands of moons ago.
From what I understand, the moon tends to do its own thing, and is a pain in the rear for calender makers in 'this' world, just because making the moon sync up with an orderly and consistent calender is difficult. If Equestria is now being pushed so that it measures things in 'moons' rather than solar years, they may not use concrete months at all, at least not ones that correlate to our own in any meaningful way.
Very interesting idea; I like it!
But, ponies control the weather and seasons, right? So, couldn't each year technically be different from one another in terms of length? I guess they could've a standardized number of days for each year and a template from which to model the whole thing. But, then again, what would be the fun in that?
In a way, Equestria is the opposite of Westeros in this matter.
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What year it is will be covered in my next post, trying to sort out the FiM timeline.
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That is actually something to consider! That actually doesn't throw things too badly out of alignment, though. A lunar moon is defined (on Earth) as 29.53095 days, how long it takes for the moon to cycle fully through states, but, depending on the culture, it could be as low as 27.32158 days, in the case of how long it takes for it to reach the same equinox point in the sky again. So it depends on how ponies would decide to measure it. Months alternating 29 and 30 days would create a 354 day year, but something to consider is that Luna has control of the moon. For all we know, lunar months in Equestria are 30 and a third days long.
I think, however, that "a moon" is more just an archaic way to measure time before the standardization of months. I'd buy this theory if I heard anyone besides an ancient, eldritch entity using it, or somepony using it outside the context of ancient texts.
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Ponies are all about the control and manipulation of their world. Order and harmony. Things that sow chaos are the antithesis of what ponies stand for. It's certainly more than possible that they could have years of differing lengths, but then, once we step into that realm, we have to ask the question; what's keeping them from just keeping it summer all the time? There's an idea for a story in there all of its own, but it's a little too similar to the premise of Game of Thrones for my taste. The longer your summers are, the longer your years are, the longer your winters need to be to compensate.
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Definitely. Officially I've got a Doylist explanation for it, and it is that it's easier to make it sound like a long time has gone by when you say 'thousands of moons'. Without nearly as much time passing if you said years.
That said, I just think it would be cool if there was something random like that to set things apart.
This is one of the best calendar rationalizations I've seen without going into fictional calendars. NOW, can you convince the real world to use it. Starting/ending the years on the winter solstice makes a HECK of a lot more sense than an arbitrary day that's a hold over from religious ideals (I get that tradition is nice, but please, people, let's not let it make our world less efficient).
I dare say this system is better than my calendar system (yes, I invented my own. everything makes more sense to me when everything is even).
-C.Storm