The group of writers who create the posts for Writers Who Kill have assigned days when our posts go up. “Our” days are not dates on the calendar, but specified times during the month. For example, my assignment is to post blogs on the third and fourth Fridays of the month, and the fourth Monday of the month. In addition, whenever a month has a fifth Monday or Friday, I blog then.
We also stop our regular blogs from Thanksgiving until New Year’s, replacing them with holiday stories that stay up about a week at a time. The stories are the group’s gift to you.
Thanksgiving is on the fourth Thursday of every month (except for a while during the Great Depression when Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced it would be the third Thursday of every month, hoping to stimulate the economy with holiday shopping. It was not a popular move.)
Whether I have a Monday post for the week of Thanksgiving depends on how late Thanksgiving is. This year, Thanksgiving must be late, since the fourth Monday is arriving before the holiday.
Because of the way my blogging schedule runs, I am more aware than I used to be about the vagaries of our calendar. Is it any wonder that I have to keep careful track of my post dates on a calendar? The key numbers on our calendar are 365 ¼, 7, and 28, 29, 30 and 31. The time required for the Earth to complete its trip around the sun is 365 ¼ days. A week is seven days. I didn’t know why until I Googled it. According to Google, the seven-day week started in ancient Babylonia because the Babylonians named the week after the seven “classical” planets, the planets observable with the naked eye. The Romans then adapted that seven-day week to their own needs by naming each day after one of their deities, which is where we get many (but not all) of our own names for the week. I do not know why we space months the way we do. Without getting too heavy into the math, given that 7, 29, and 31 are prime numbers, and the number 365 is made by multiplying the prime numbers 5 and 73, finding smaller units that all of them can go into evenly is nigh impossible. I can imagine the metric people, who tried to put as much as possible into multiples of ten, studying the calendar and finally throwing up their hands in defeat, leaving us with our current system.
I’m glad the current calendar iteration left me with a chance to visit with you one last time before the holidays. And wherever you are, and whatever you celebrate, I hope the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s is filled with joyous events and happy thoughts. I’ll see you again starting January 16, 2026.
