Thank God for Sundays — and the failure of the French Republican calendar

God, Who rested on the seventh day “from all His work which He had done,” commanded that man should do likewise.

As part of their de-Christianization campaign, the French revolutionaries over 230 years ago rebuffed this divine commandment. Instead, they determined that anyone who managed to survive their historic bloodletting would have to rest on the final day of a 10-day cycle marked on a new calendar no longer commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.

‘An almost identical anti-clerical measure was applied nearly a century and a half later by Stalin.’

Fortunately for those who labor today, this calendar, like the bloodthirsty republic that invented it, is no more.

The National Convention, the assembly that governed France from 1792 to 1795, decreed in late 1793 that “the vulgar era” of marking time was “abolished for civil usage” and that the era of the French Republic began on September 22, 1792, “at 9:18:30 in the morning.”

The leftist regime that guillotined an estimated 17,000 people during the Reign of Terror determined that moving forward, every year would be divided into 12 equal months each comprising 30 days. These 12 months would then be followed by five days that didn’t belong to any month.

Each month was divided in three equal parts, which the leftists referred to as decades because they had 10 days: Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, Quartidi, Quintidi, Sextidi, Septidi, Octidi, Nonidi, and Décadi.

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Gilbert Romme, the Montagnard politician who oversaw the short-lived calendar’s development, noted in 1793:

The vulgar era was born among an ignorant and credulous people amidst the troubles that were precursor to the fall of the Roman Empire. For eighteen centuries it served to fix within duration the progress of fanaticism, the degradation of nations; the scandalous triumph of pride, vice, and stupidity; and the persecutions and disgust that virtue, talent, and philosophy suffered under cruel despots who allowed this to be done in their name.

While the supposedly enlightened leftists’ new week had extra days, it didn’t have additional days of mandated rest. Romme noted that only the 10th day was the “day of Repose.”

In addition to having more workdays between days of rest, the new week disrupted church attendance — by design.

Sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel noted that:

aside from the immediate symbolic significance of doing away with one of the most sacred elements within the Christian tradition, the introduction of the ten-day rhythm of social life played a major role in disrupting church-attending practices, since it presented both practical and cognitive difficulties in keeping up with the traditional, sacred seven-day cycle. It is interesting to note that an almost identical anti-clerical measure was applied nearly a century and a half later by Stalin.

The new calendar also stripped common folk of all the holy days, including Christmas, that filled up their rejected Christian calendar. They were instead allotted the five days that didn’t fit into any particular month to celebrate select values of the revolutionaries, including revolution and industry.

Unsurprisingly, the French people resented the new calendar, reported Radio France Internationale.

While coming between working people and their weekends was far down the list of the things the French revolutionaries got wrong, the Anno Domini of that particular failure is nevertheless worth marking.

Although it made an 18-day reappearance in May 1871, the French Republican calendar was abolished in 1806 by the republican turned dictator Napoleon Bonaparte.

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