About a year ago I adop­ted the French Repub­lican Cal­en­dar for my per­sonal journ­alling. Why? Really for republican.jpg no other reason than to be dif­fer­ent. It offered me the oppor­tun­ity to learn the Repub­lican Cal­en­dar through prac­tise (a word-a-day sort of arrange­ment). The upheaval of the switch to a new sys­tem in France in 1795, caused con­fu­sion, was not widely adop­ted and in the end was dis­con­tin­ued by Napo­leon dur­ing the Empire. This was not before such ref­er­ences such as the Coup of 18 Bru­maire and lob­ster Ther­midor forever embed­ded the poet­i­cisme of the cal­en­dar­ing sys­tem in our his­tor­ical memory.

The cal­en­dar is divided in to 12 months of 30 days, with three weeks of 10 days each. The ‘extra’ days of the solar year were cel­eb­rated as spe­cial fest­ival days (vir­tue, tal­ent, convictions,labour, hon­ours and the Revolu­tion) — inten­ded to solidly cement the tri­umph of the Revolu­tion into the French psyche. Months are top­ic­ally named after envir­on­mental char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the months them­selves and each day of the cal­en­dar is asso­ci­ated with a plant, min­eral, tool, or animal. Dur­ing the winter months, we have the months of snow, rain and wind. On a daily basis, today we cel­eb­rate Bette (Chard). When one con­siders the sys­tem it’s actu­ally rather cool, if not prac­tical. It emphas­izes the indi­vidual or human’s pos­i­tion with in a lar­ger nat­ural world. Need­less to say it is a human­ist device and was con­sidered integ­ral to the sec­u­lar­iz­a­tion of the Repub­lic. But after using it for nearly a full cycle now I quite like the way in which I am reminded of a single nat­ural bounty, which one can­not help but reflect upon that day. It’s a won­der­ful reminder of one’s place as well as the fruits of the envir­on­ment. It might be con­sidered the ‘green calendar’.

If you are inter­ested in more info about the cal­en­dar, the wiki­pe­dia entry is a great start, and has a num­ber of addi­tional ref­er­ences. Addi­tion­ally, and I have really appre­ci­ated this, there is a Repub­lican Cal­en­dar wid­get for the OSX dash­board avail­able which reminds you of the date and its asso­ci­ated element.

On a per­sonal note, a few days ago, the cycle changed and we entered the sea­son of Ger­minal. I was per­son­ally struck by the change and felt quite pos­it­ive — all the more Spring-like, but some­how more than the term spring brought to my mind. Even with the news remind­ers, and media atten­tion to the advent of the Spring sea­son, the turn to Ger­minal some­how was more pro­foundly strik­ing. Ger­minal set me off pic­tur­ing new growth, ger­min­a­tion, the col­our green and of re-awakening fol­low­ing the white­ness and bleak­ness of the the past sea­son. In the Repub­lican Cal­en­dar the past month was Ventôse and I hon­estly can­not remem­ber a month when this seemed all the more appro­pri­ately descript­ive. The winds howled this winter and this repub­lican asso­ci­ation with char­ac­ter­ist­ics seemed both close and . With the change in cycle we are reminded that even without human inter­ven­tion, the sea­son do change and that we are part of an infin­itely lar­ger sys­tem. One nowe mov­ing into a rich, vital­iz­ing rebirth.