Calendar facts for kids

A calendar is a system of organising days for social, religious, commercial or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physical record (often paper) of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar or a partly or fully chronological list of documents, such as a calendar of wills.

Periods in a calendar (such as years and months) are usually, though not necessarily, synchronised with the cycle of the sun or the moon. The most common type of pre-modern calendar was the lunisolar calendar, a lunar calendar that occasionally adds one intercalary month to remain synchronised with the solar year over the long term.

The term calendar is taken from calendae, the term for the first day of the month in the Roman calendar, related to the verb calare "to call out", referring to the "calling" of the new moon when it was first seen. Latin calendarium meant "account book, register" (as accounts were settled and debts were collected on the calends of each month). The Latin term was adopted in Old French as calendier and from there in Middle English as calender by the 13th century (the spelling calendar is early modern).

Calendars in use

The primary practical use of a calendar is to identify days: to be informed about or to agree on a future event and to record an event that has happened. Days may be significant for agricultural, civil, religious or social reasons. For example, a calendar provides a way to determine when to start planting or harvesting, which days are religious or civil holidays, which days mark the beginning and end of business accounting periods, and which days have legal significance, such as the day taxes are due or a contract expires. Also a calendar may, by identifying a day, provide other useful information about the day such as its season.

Calendars are also used to help people manage their personal schedules, time and activities, particularly when individuals have numerous work, school, and family commitments. People frequently use multiple systems, and may keep both a business and family calendar to help prevent them from overcommitting their time.

Calendars are also used as part of a complete timekeeping system: date and time of day together specify a moment in time. In the modern world, timekeepers can show time, date and weekday.

Related pages

• Anno Domini (AD)
• Common Era (CE)
• Friday (Muslim)
• Saturday (Jewish)
• Sunday (Christian)
• Gregorian calendar (Christian)
• Jewish calendar (Jewish)
• Islamic calendar (Muslim)

Images for kids

• 

  British calendar, 1851, gilt bronze and malachite, height: 20.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

• 

  Indonesian modern Gregorian calendar for a Catholic church

• 

  Equinox seen from the astronomic calendar of Pizzo Vento at Fondachelli Fantina, Sicily

• 

  Sun and Moon, Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

• 

  Calendar of the Qahal, 5591 (1831)

• 

  A Hindu almanac (pancanga) for the year 1871/2 from Rajasthan (Library of Congress, Asian Division)

• 

  The Payment of the Tithes (The tax-collector), also known as Village Lawyer, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger

• 

  A calendar from the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad

See also

In Spanish: Calendario para niños