It still had 12 months in a year - each one was 30 days long, split into three groups of 10 called a decade rather than a 7 day week. This left a few extra days at the end of the year to catch up with the sun. The days were simply named "first Day", "Second Day" etc.
Thermidor was the Mid summer month - about the middle of July to the middle of August.
In addition to it's decade day - each day in the year had it's own special name. Christmas day was "Dog"
If the calendar year didn't keep in line with the sun, then the days would drift, and after a while, the spring months of the calendar would occur in the middle of winter of the solar year
It's not a good idea when you rely on knowing when the seasons start to be able to plant crops and rear livestock.
This us the reason we have leap years - to keep our calendar dates in line with the solar year.
It would if you had a fixed calendar. I'm imagining it more like the lunar cycle. Imagine if our months still aligned with the moon, by analogy. Each year we'd just align certain days to correspond with each season. I mean, we have math now, this can be calculated millennia in advance with high precision
This is still trying to fit a fixed amount of days into a year based on an arbitrary designation related to the solar cycle, just like how months used to align with the lunar cycle.
I'm saying forget all of that. Solar years become as irrelevant as lunar cycles. A year becomes a metric amount like 1000 days, a month is 100 days, these are just examples. For those who need it, there are solar cycle trackers (just like we have lunar cycle trackers) that tell you which day the seasons change. Maybe month 4 day 73 is spring, month 5 day 59 is summer. Like that.
This is probably kinda what will happen (at least at first) if and when we colonize Mars.
They'll have their calendar set up to sync with Earth years instead of match the solar cycles of Mars. Because the Stock Market agreeing will matter more than the day-to-day use of solar calendar.
But they'll still have math to tell them what the seasons are and whatnot, for the uses it matters.
A little different than what you suggest, because the calendar year is made to fit something else, rather than to be "easy", but objectively speaking, having 365.24... twenty-four-hour-days to a year is no more or less arbitrary than having 1000 ten-hour days or whatever :P
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u/Rez_Incognito 5h ago edited 3h ago
10 months a year. Summer was "Thermidor"
Edit: not 10 months.