Perpetual calendars

A perpetual calendar is a calendar valid for many years, usually designed to allow the calculation of the day of the week for a given date in the future.

For the Gregorian and Julian calendars, a perpetual calendar typically consists of one of two general variations:

The seven calendars may be combined into one, either with 13 columns of which only seven are revealed, or with movable day-of-week names (as shown in the pocket perpetual calendar picture.

Note that such a perpetual calendar fails to indicate the dates of moveable feasts such as Easter, which are calculated based on a combination of events in the Tropical year and lunar cycles. These issues are dealt with in great detail in Computus.

An early example of a perpetual calendar for practical use is found in the manuscript GNM 3227a. The calendar covers the period of 1390–1495 (on which grounds the manuscript is dated to c. 1389). For each year of this period, it lists the number of weeks between Christmas day and Quinquagesima. This is the first known instance of a tabular form of perpetual calendar allowing the calculation of the moveable feasts which became popular during the 15th century.

These meanings are beyond the scope of the remainder of this article.

Perpetual calendars use algorithms to compute the day of the week for any given year, month, and day of month. Even though the individual operations in the formulas can be very efficiently implemented in software, they are too complicated for most people to perform all of the arithmetic mentally. Perpetual calendar designers hide the complexity in tables to simplify their use.

A perpetual calendar employs a table for finding which of fourteen yearly calendars to use. A table for the Gregorian calendar expresses its 400-year grand cycle: 303 common years and 97 leap years total to 146,097 days, or exactly 20,871 weeks. This cycle breaks down into one 100-year period with 25 leap years, making 36,525 days, or one day less than 5,218 full weeks; and three 100-year periods with 24 leap years each, making 36,524 days, or two days less than 5,218 full weeks.

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