Issue Date: December 19, 2004

In this article: A brief history of the calendar Ring in 2005 with 5,000 calendars

'Tis the season of the calendar

A leading expert on time takes a moment to reflect on the days, weeks and months of our lives.

By David Ewing Duncan

"People want calendars that speak to their passion, obsession and sense of fun." Calendars with Labradors are the No. 1 seller.

How many times have you peeked at a calendar today?

I have at least three hanging in my house, one on my computer, another in my Palm, and several more at work. If calendars were chocolate bars, I'd be a dirigible.

Americans are obsessed with time. We save it, waste it, keep it, spend it, kill it, lose it and long for more of it. As a species, our preoccupation with time may be our most distinctive trait (after self-awareness), because one of the first things we must have realized was that we live and die in a set period of time. Soon after, we must have realized how short our life spans are compared with the apparent agelessness of the Earth, the stars and the cosmos. The latest estimates tell us the universe is 13.7 billion years old, a billion times older than my young niece.

Having a calendar became essential when humans began to grow crops and fight wars. The first calendars were carved in bones and on stones, and they date back at least 28,000 years. Today we operate with atomic clocks that measure nanoseconds, billionths of a second, a time span required for calibrating satellites precisely and measuring energy waves inside microchips.

More than ever, we are a people of time and of the calendar. Yet the calendar is mostly an artifice: We made it up.

The year exists in nature as the time it takes the Earth to circle the sun. A day is a full rotation of the Earth. But weeks, months, minutes, seconds -- they are as artificial as everyone in America deciding to drive on the right side of the road instead of the left.

Not long ago, most people's clocks and calendars were the sun and the seasons. Then came water clocks, mechanical clocks and, later, trains with schedules by the day, hour and minute. "Being late" became a common 20th-century ailment as people missed the 4:12 p.m. express and got stuck in traffic that made them late for crucial job interviews or their best friend's wedding or that playoff game with the seats right behind home plate.

Lateness, for some, has been honed down to a millisecond or two if you come in second in the 100-meter dash, or a billionth of a second if you're a fighter pilot trying to land an F-14 Tomcat on an aircraft carrier, where a few billionths of a second can mean missing the deck and crashing into the sea.

Bizarrely, as time is spliced ever finer and becomes ever more precious, old-fashioned weeks, months and even years seem to go by faster. We simply have more things to do, more things to know. We used to communicate by leaving a message and asking someone to call back, or -- how quaint it seems now! -- by sending a letter. With e-mails and instant messaging, we are now in constant contact with everyone we know all the time.

Time is steady and unchanging here on Earth; it only appears to move ever faster. Yet time also can be relative, as Albert Einstein theorized, making it possible to slow down time -- and even to travel forward in time.

Climb aboard a spaceship zipping along at near the speed of light, Einstein said, and time would seem to pass normally, but actually it would be slowing down for anyone on board relative to time on Earth. Say you leave on a light-speed journey to the stars at age 25, waving so long to your twin sister. Returning 50 Earth years later, you would still be young, while Sis would now be 75 years old -- a kind of time travel for those aboard the ship.

Time travel is possible even without leaving Earth's atmosphere. This was proven in 1971 when two scientists took an atomic clock on board a jet flying slightly faster than the rotation of the Earth. Flying west, the clock registered a slowdown of 273 nanoseconds for those traveling on the airplane relative to time on the ground. So everyone on that flight traveled in time ahead of those on Earth by 273 nanoseconds.

And now, my nanoseconds are up. I gotta go, because I'm out of time.

David Ewing Duncan is the author of "Calendar," about the history of timekeeping, and a book about key figures in genetics, due out in May.

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Ring in 2005 -- with 5,000 calendars

Joy! With the New Year just two weeks away, it's almost time to pop open a bottle of cold champagne -- and crack open our spiffy new 2005 calendars.

Along with the kind of car you drive or music you download, calendars have become our latest form of self-definition. Are you into dogs, cats, gardening or travel? Are you stylish or silly, artsy or craftsy? "People want calendars that speak to their passion, obsession and sense of fun," says Susan Bolotin of Workman Publishing, a major calendar publisher.

Palms and BlackBerrys just can't compete when it comes to sheer breathtaking variety. An astounding 5,000 varieties are available on Calendars.com, the largest seller of calendars.

And what's not to love? Labrador retrievers, like the one on our cover, are the single best-selling subject at Calendars.com, where sales have skyrocketed 70% this year over last.

Here's where our calendar passions run hottest now:

Pretty. By adding color and logos, designer calendar makers like Filofax, Kate Spade and Coach have made their little black (or pink or lime) books must-have accessories for the trendy.
Overscheduled families. With separate columns for each family member, "Mom's" family calendars are a new staple in kitchens across America. (They don't make these for dads yet ...)
Celebrity crushes. Biggies this year are Clay Aiken, Britney Spears, Orlando Bloom and the cast of "The O.C."
Best of both worlds. For those who want their Palm in one hand and datebook in the other, the latest snazzy binders are designed to hold both.
Personalized calendars. With a digital camera, special software and help from companies like Digilabs, you can customize your calendar with any shots you want.
Collectibles. Even outdated calendars find new life on eBay, where one day last month more than 7,000 were listed in the collectibles category. Among them: a 1997 "Lord of the Rings"/Tolkien calendar.
Multitask. Page-A-Day best sellers double as origami and tiny paper airplanes.
Get crafty. The scrapbooking and knitting crazes have created a growing demand for calendars on those topics.
Daily humor. Popular titles this year: "Nuns Having Fun" and "George W. Bushisms: The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Our 43rd President."
-- Gayle Jo Carter

Cover photo illustration for USA WEEKEND by Saundra Giering, Eyeland (dog image by G.K. & Vikki Hart, Iconica)