On Matters Calendarical · 10:31pm Apr 16th, 2017
So. Spurred on by conversations elsewhere, I have taken a moment or two to hammer out a first draft version of my concept of an Equestrian calendar for the Advancedverse - not that you shouldn't feel free to help yourself if you like it or any part of it - one that isn't what you might call strictly canon-compliant, but which does save me from having to cobble together an explanation for where all the Latin and Roman emperors fit in to Equestrian history, in re month names. (It also necessarily assumes that some episodes were shown in anachronic order.) It works on a 360-day year, of 12 months/moons of 30 days each; the year starts at the beginning of spring.
The theme for month names I took from the French Revolutionary calendar, on the grounds that this being a sketch of the commonly-used earth pony calendar, agricultural and yearly-cycle names would suit. I assume the pegasi - who always had to coordinate the weather pretty closely with the farmers anyway, assuming anyone wanted to eat - use the same calendar with more meteorologically themed names where relevant. There's also an excruciatingly complex unicorn calendar based on celestial motions with more epicycles than you can shake a stick it, which is typically used by deeply scholarly works and by those who elevate their tribal snobbery several thousand feet above convenience and common sense both.
Credit for the additional season-ending holiday/work party names properly goes to FanOfMostEverything, here.
So herewith the months, and important dates in them:
SPRING
I. Sprouting
15 Sprouting: Tornado Day
I put this early in the year on the theory that this gets all the excess meltwater from Winter Wrap-Up back in the sky where it belongs.
II. Flowering
15 Flowering: Hearts & Hooves Day
III. Meadowful
30 Meadowful: Spring Suspension
SUMMER
IV. Haying
21 Haying: Grand Galloping Gala
I envision this as the the opening of the summer soiree season in Canterlot. It also conveniently covers what appears to be the fairly substantial amount of time and season changes passing between The Ticket Master and The Best Night Ever.
V. Summerheat
15 Summerheat: Summer Sun Celebration
VI. Applebuck
30 Applebuck: Summer Shut-Down
AUTUMN
VII. Harvest
VIII. Leafturn
15 Leafturn: Running of the Leaves
I put this one in the middle of autumn to avoid combining it with Fall Finale.
IX. Mistful
15 Mistful: Nightmare Night
30 Mistful: Fall Finale
WINTER
X. Snowful
24 Snowful: Hearth's Warming Eve
25 Snowful: Hearth's Warming
On the same day of the month as our Christmas, because why the heck not?
XI. Coldsleep
15 Coldsleep: Winter Moon Celebration (former)
Not celebrated in recent years, but back in the glorious pre-Nightmare days of the diarchy, something like this must have existed to balance out the year. (I imagine the traditional celebration to have involved, as well as the moon-raising, astronomy, art, lucid dreaming, and moonshine in varying proportions. Any restored version of it will probably also include sending out the Night Guard to remind any leftover Nightmare cults that PRINCESS LUNA DOTH NOT APPROVE OF THIS.)
XII. Windful
30 Windful: Winter Wrap-Up
Still being thought of/poked at:
1. Weekday names, because I don't think Equestrian Germanic paganism (with or without one-horned Vikings) is a thing, either. I'm also probably going to run with a six-day week, because if the Princesses are already rationalizing the calendar into a nice clean 360-day year, they can probably make the week fit into it evenly, too.
2. General tweaking.
It's always tremendously gratifying to see other people inspired by my ideas. Also, this is a neat bit of world building in general. That unicorn calendar sounds delightfully ridiculous, especially given the nature of the ponies' solar system in this universe.
IMHC, Sunday and Saturday are named after the Royal Pony Sisters: Celestriad for Sunday and Selenium for Saturday. Also, as an addendum to the naming convention of the planets, they are the Greek equivalents of our planets, I. E.: Hermes for Mercury, Aphrodite for Venus, etc., etc.
<nerdy-stuff> You know, I've been looking for ideas of quick-'n-fun things I could do to practice my Java coding, and looking at this makes me want to create an Equestrian version of the Date and Time library. </nerdy-stuff>
I eagerly await your determination of their weekday naming convention. You've got a talent for worldbuilding.
Well, having dived (dove? diven? How does English even present perfect sometimes?) deeper than I think I should have into the philosophical quagmire that is Java.time, I've learned that they kindly provided a bunch of hooks for creating calendar systems of arbitrary complexity.
Thank you, Oracle! I know it wasn't your intended use case, but it's still appreciated.
Now to actually decide on a set of eras (Pre-Classical was one, IIRC?) and epoch dates for each one. To the headcanon armory!
This is going to be equal parts fun and frustrating, but hey, that's what I signed up for.