The French Republican Calendar was one outlet for the Jacobin regime to rid France of Catholic precepts and dogma. By doing away with the Gregorian calendar and even the idea of a seven-day week, the revolutionaries attempted to embrace reason in all facets of life.

The calendar is ordered as follows: each week (décade) consisted of ten days. The tenth day (rather than the seventh) was a day of rest. Every month consisted of three decades. Year one of the calendar began in 1792. So, 2016 is the year 225 of the “era of liberty.” The first day of the new year was the autumnal equinox. Every month had a new name that corresponded to the season.

The fifth day of every decade celebrated a common animal and the tenth celebrated an agricultural tool. All the rest celebrated plants, flowers and fruit.

To account for several “lost” Sundays (and therefore lost days of rest), every year ended with five extra “complementary” days. These celebrated the pillars of the revolutionaries: virtue, talent, labor, convictions, honors and on leap years a sixth day – revolution.

Far more confusing than the reordering of the calendar was the reordering of the clock. The revolutionaries had fully embraced decimal time. Every day now consisted of ten hours. Each hour was 100 minutes and each minute, 100 seconds. The new decimal hour was the equivalent of 144 minutes in Gregorian time.

My interest in this was piqued by the receipt of the beautiful wall calendar created by Ursula Lawrence @jacobincalendar. Buy your own and follow along at home!

I am a person interested in odd trivia and cooking. I’m also a mom and a lawyer.