Time and New Year
by: Fr. Rannie Aquino
A Bingo establishment recently opened in my hometown, Tuguegarao City, announcing that patrons were welcome to play for “25 hours”. Some laughed it off as a silly error; others thought of it as a way of saying that they would keep open way beyond all other establishments. I asked myself what the matter might be with 25 hours. Of course maintaining a day of 25 hours would put one in the very least one hour out of sync with the rest of humanity, but that makes of a 25-hour day neither an impossibility nor a completely impracticable solution. There is, of course, the astronomical fact that the earth’s rotation is somewhere around 24 hours, and its revolution, anywhere between 365 and 366 days, but these facts are relevant only because we choose to order our affairs according to these astronomical regularities. But we do have some tolerance for alternative ways of reckoning. The so-called Chinese New Year, actually the “new year” that goes by lunar counting, does not coincide with January 1, and its festive celebration in the Philippines is catching on. The same thing is true of a year. What happens on the first day of January is that we change calendars, adjust our watches, and change diaries and logbooks -- all of them, measuring devices. But certainly, a year is not a measuring device!
by: Fr. Rannie Aquino
A Bingo establishment recently opened in my hometown, Tuguegarao City, announcing that patrons were welcome to play for “25 hours”. Some laughed it off as a silly error; others thought of it as a way of saying that they would keep open way beyond all other establishments. I asked myself what the matter might be with 25 hours. Of course maintaining a day of 25 hours would put one in the very least one hour out of sync with the rest of humanity, but that makes of a 25-hour day neither an impossibility nor a completely impracticable solution. There is, of course, the astronomical fact that the earth’s rotation is somewhere around 24 hours, and its revolution, anywhere between 365 and 366 days, but these facts are relevant only because we choose to order our affairs according to these astronomical regularities. But we do have some tolerance for alternative ways of reckoning. The so-called Chinese New Year, actually the “new year” that goes by lunar counting, does not coincide with January 1, and its festive celebration in the Philippines is catching on. The same thing is true of a year. What happens on the first day of January is that we change calendars, adjust our watches, and change diaries and logbooks -- all of them, measuring devices. But certainly, a year is not a measuring device!