Your US-DK Cultural Difference Tidbit for Today: Calendars

We're having an unusual spate of warm, sunny weather here in DK.  The blue sky has been visible, which is such a treat to my eyes.  The almost always-present puffy clouds, on the other hand, can feel suffocating at times (just as the foothills of the Appalachian mountains made me feel in southeastern Ohio).


Last night, as the daylight extended late into the evening hours, I thought about the differences of typical calendars published in the US and DK. 


In the US, a week consists of Sunday - Saturday.  Some fancy calendars may also include what day of the year it is, and how many days remain.  Who uses that info, I don't know.

In DK, a week consists of Monday - Sunday.  (What these differences have to do with Christianity and the importance of worshiping on the "7th Day", or when and where and why these changes were made is beyond me.)  Something else VERY important is what week of the year it is.  Many timelines here are measured by the number of the week.  For example, a store's sale flier says, "Good for week 5".  A syllabus says, for example, "Week 35: Introduction...Week 42: Fall Holiday...Week 50: Last Classes".  No university student is fond of weeks 1-3 or usually 22-24, as those are the final exam weeks for fall and spring semesters.

So weekly calendars here consist of 8 columns, with the first containing which week of the year it is, the second being the date of Monday, and the last being the date of Sunday.  This week's calender looks like:

29  19 20 21 22 23 24 25

This design has tripped me up more times than I can remember.  It is so automatic for me to look at the last column for Saturday, that I have had to send out corrections for dinner parties that I mistakenly scheduled for a Sunday night. 

At first I did not pay much attention to the number of the week.  But living so far up north has changed that! Here is a link to a world map with Denmark in red, so you can see how far north it is.  For those who want more precise measurements, the CIA's World Factbook gives Denmark the geographic coordinates of 56 00 N, 10 00 E.

As there are 52 weeks in a year (actually there were 53 in 2009), and the shortest day (winter solstice) falls usually in the next-to-last week of the year, I greatly look forward to weeks 24 or 25, as they will contain the longest day of the year (summer solstice). Yippee! Sunshine!!!  Likewise, after late September or so, I greatly look forward to the winter solstice, as that will bring an end to the maddeningly shrinking amount of daylight that leaves us in a stupor.

Measuring time on a calendar by what week of the year it is also brings an impetus to actually do something. Knowing that it is already week 29 of the year kind of freaks me out.  How are 2010's goals coming along?  There's only 23 more weeks left to accomplish them!  It just doesn't feel the same, to know that today is the 199th day of the year, and 166 remain.  If only I could get used to finding Sunday at the end of the week.