offside flag

Tear Up the Calendar

Officials from the Celestrial Dynasty have annoucned that Christmas should not be celebrated as it reminds people of foreign humiliation and decadance. Instead traditional feast days should be widely celebrated. However, officials has determined that the ban has not gone far enough. They have stated that any festival with foreign origins (including Easter, Valentine's Day, Halloween, Labour Day, International Women's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day) should not be celebrated. The festivals will be replaced with the Dynasty's equivalent, if such a festival already exists, otherwise new festivals (such as the Founder's birthday) should be created.

Officials have also reviwed the calendar and decided that the calendar should be updated, since the current calendar is designed by foreigners and anno Domini has religious roots and officials consider religion to be spiritual opium. (Within the Dynasty, only the Founder and the present Leader are to be worshipped.) There is no decision on how to renumber the year yet, since there are disagreements on the reference for the beginning of "Year 1". While critics have argued that such a change would cause massive inconvenience to the public and disrupt international business business, officials are adament that the change should be made, no matter the cost.

Under the current proposal, changes to the calender include adopting the lunar calendar (with leap months) and scrapping the week (since the 7-day week has religious origins). The officials have yet to determine how to replace the 7-day week, but some scholars from the government have proposed a 10 days cycle, since 10 days is a traditional time unit in the Dynasty. Officials and scholars are also debating on the length of a reformed work week, since some historical documents showed that people in ancient times follow a 5-day cycle (work 4 days, followed by 1 day's rest) while other documents stated that a 10-day cycle (work 9 days, followed by 1 day's rest). At the officials' request, scholars are currently searching for documents showing work-rest cycles which would not result in a reduction in the number of off-work days. Sources claimed that officials may be considering adopting 2 different work-rest cycle — one (with more days off) for the officials and one for the others.

The officials have also stated forcefully that if any other foreign nation do something similar — banning people from celebrating festivals from the Celestrial Dynasty — the Celestrial Dynasty would issue travel bans, trade sanctions/embargoes on the nation. There are also rumours that the Dynasty is studying to adopt a new clock which follows the Dynasty's traditional time units, but the officials remains tight-lipped.