Calendars
04/01/14 05:58
1986 was the second year that we lived in Boise, Idaho. Our son, Isaac attended Boise Cooperative Preschool for the first half of the year and began Kindergarten at the school near our house in the fall. Our daughter, Rachel was eager to begin at the preschool in the fall. I was working hard to expand youth ministries at our church with the Western Regional Youth event on the schedule for the summer. The plan was for youth from the Portland, Oregon area to take the train to Boise where our youth would join them for a ride to Denver where we would switch to vans for the shuttle out to the camp. I hiked the Barr trail up Pike’s Peak with youth from around the Western United States that summer and learned a little bit about the treatment of altitude sickness as I helped a young man from Hawaii who probably would have been much happier had he chosen another one of the options for that day. There were a lot of other events and milestones that day, and I’d have to do some checking to think of what else we did that year.
That year began with the Challenger disaster. Images of the exploding rocket and spaceship were forever etched into our minds as we watched the footage in horror over and over again on the television. Seven astronauts dead. One of them was Christa McAuliffe, the teacher from Concord, New Hampshire. We had been following the teacher in space program closely in part because Barbara Morgan, a teacher from Idaho was the backup for McAuliffe. Morgan went on to become a mission specialist, but it was six years before she made her trip on the Endeavor and several more years before the teacher in space program was back on track.
1986 was a year with a fair amount of political turmoil. Haitian President Jean-Claude Duvalier ended up fleeing to France in February. Shortly afterward President Ferdinand Marcos left the Philippines and Corazon Aquiino became president. The world marveled at the size of the shoe collection that Imelda Marcos left behind. The excesses of the president and his family make headlines day after day.
The Chernobyl power station disaster in Russia made the headlines in the US. Later we learned that the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory worked hard running simulations and providing possible solutions for the their colleagues in Russia.
The reason I’ve been thinking about 1986 is that I caught a news item in the Daily Mail about 1986 calendars selling like hotcakes on the Internet. If you happen to have saved a calendar from that year, this might the the right time to get it out and list it on e-bay. The reason those calendars are hot this year is that the days of the week line up perfectly with 2014. New Year’s Day 1986 was a Wednesday and Christmas landed on a Thursday. According to the story in the Mail, a 1986 Baywatch calendar went for $50. The Hulk Hogan calendar only brought $22, however, so you might not want to base your entire financial future on selling old calendars if all you have is a Teddy Bear Collection calendar. On the other hand, I’d hold out for at least $100 if I had kept the Pirelli tire wall calendar from our shop. The company’s 2014 calendar is a blast from the past and features the same black and white photographs that they printed in 1986. The John Deere calendar for 1986 sported a really small Deere logo and 12 gorgeous landscape pictures with the words, “The Beautiful Land Around Us.” The 1980’s weren’t good years for farmers or farm machinery dealers. Deere and Cat were the only major manufacturers of farm equipment that didn’t suffer at least partial bankruptcy in that decade.
Alas, I don’t have any of those calendars from 1986. And I don’t think that anyone is going to get rich selling 1986 calendars this year. After all calendars from 1997 and 2003 will also work this year. They all will work in 2025, too, if you want to plan ahead.
Having said that, the calendars just won’t work for me. Even though the days of the week line up correctly, the formal by which Easter is determined isn’t as simple. In 1986, Easter was March 30, but this year we’ll be observing it on April 20. The 1997 calendar won’t work for Easter, either, but you could have used the 1986 calendar that year. If you want Easter to line up on your calendar and want to re-use an old calendar, go for 2003 in 2014. Easter was April 20 in 2003 and will be April 20 this year.
If it all sounds confusing, it is probably because it is. In the church we have a tradition that dates at least back to the 2nd Century about what day to celebrate Easter. Since the Bible is clear in stating that Jesus death occurred sometime around the Passover, which is celebrated on the first full moon following the vernal equinox, some Christians began celebrating Easter on Passover. Others felt that it was important to celebrate the resurrection on a Sunday so they celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Well, that is except for the Quartodecimans, who celebrated Easter on the day of the full moon, 14 days into the month. So we hardly had agreement about the date of the celebration in the early church.
Then came Pope Gregory, who decided that the calendar was getting messed up. The failure to include leap years and so the calendar wouldn’t keep aligned with the seasons. Gregory instituted a new calendar to replace the old Julian calendar. In the Great Schism, the eastern churches stayed with the Julian calendar and the western churches went with the Gregorian. We’ve been celebrating Easter on different days ever since. These days folks from the Eastern Orthodox church transfer the dates from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar so that the rest of the calendar lines up, with only Ash Wednesday, Lent and Easter being aligned differently.
To avoid confusion, I’m just using a 2014 calendar this year.
That year began with the Challenger disaster. Images of the exploding rocket and spaceship were forever etched into our minds as we watched the footage in horror over and over again on the television. Seven astronauts dead. One of them was Christa McAuliffe, the teacher from Concord, New Hampshire. We had been following the teacher in space program closely in part because Barbara Morgan, a teacher from Idaho was the backup for McAuliffe. Morgan went on to become a mission specialist, but it was six years before she made her trip on the Endeavor and several more years before the teacher in space program was back on track.
1986 was a year with a fair amount of political turmoil. Haitian President Jean-Claude Duvalier ended up fleeing to France in February. Shortly afterward President Ferdinand Marcos left the Philippines and Corazon Aquiino became president. The world marveled at the size of the shoe collection that Imelda Marcos left behind. The excesses of the president and his family make headlines day after day.
The Chernobyl power station disaster in Russia made the headlines in the US. Later we learned that the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory worked hard running simulations and providing possible solutions for the their colleagues in Russia.
The reason I’ve been thinking about 1986 is that I caught a news item in the Daily Mail about 1986 calendars selling like hotcakes on the Internet. If you happen to have saved a calendar from that year, this might the the right time to get it out and list it on e-bay. The reason those calendars are hot this year is that the days of the week line up perfectly with 2014. New Year’s Day 1986 was a Wednesday and Christmas landed on a Thursday. According to the story in the Mail, a 1986 Baywatch calendar went for $50. The Hulk Hogan calendar only brought $22, however, so you might not want to base your entire financial future on selling old calendars if all you have is a Teddy Bear Collection calendar. On the other hand, I’d hold out for at least $100 if I had kept the Pirelli tire wall calendar from our shop. The company’s 2014 calendar is a blast from the past and features the same black and white photographs that they printed in 1986. The John Deere calendar for 1986 sported a really small Deere logo and 12 gorgeous landscape pictures with the words, “The Beautiful Land Around Us.” The 1980’s weren’t good years for farmers or farm machinery dealers. Deere and Cat were the only major manufacturers of farm equipment that didn’t suffer at least partial bankruptcy in that decade.
Alas, I don’t have any of those calendars from 1986. And I don’t think that anyone is going to get rich selling 1986 calendars this year. After all calendars from 1997 and 2003 will also work this year. They all will work in 2025, too, if you want to plan ahead.
Having said that, the calendars just won’t work for me. Even though the days of the week line up correctly, the formal by which Easter is determined isn’t as simple. In 1986, Easter was March 30, but this year we’ll be observing it on April 20. The 1997 calendar won’t work for Easter, either, but you could have used the 1986 calendar that year. If you want Easter to line up on your calendar and want to re-use an old calendar, go for 2003 in 2014. Easter was April 20 in 2003 and will be April 20 this year.
If it all sounds confusing, it is probably because it is. In the church we have a tradition that dates at least back to the 2nd Century about what day to celebrate Easter. Since the Bible is clear in stating that Jesus death occurred sometime around the Passover, which is celebrated on the first full moon following the vernal equinox, some Christians began celebrating Easter on Passover. Others felt that it was important to celebrate the resurrection on a Sunday so they celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Well, that is except for the Quartodecimans, who celebrated Easter on the day of the full moon, 14 days into the month. So we hardly had agreement about the date of the celebration in the early church.
Then came Pope Gregory, who decided that the calendar was getting messed up. The failure to include leap years and so the calendar wouldn’t keep aligned with the seasons. Gregory instituted a new calendar to replace the old Julian calendar. In the Great Schism, the eastern churches stayed with the Julian calendar and the western churches went with the Gregorian. We’ve been celebrating Easter on different days ever since. These days folks from the Eastern Orthodox church transfer the dates from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar so that the rest of the calendar lines up, with only Ash Wednesday, Lent and Easter being aligned differently.
To avoid confusion, I’m just using a 2014 calendar this year.