Welcome to F97.BE!
Python, Photons, and Predictions.
Erik's French Republican Calendar Converter
Cooked up in the revolutionary pressure cooker of 1793, the French Republican Calendar was the ultimate attempt to guillotine the old way of keeping time. Out with saints and Sundays, in with reason, nature, and a big ol' dose of Enlightenment idealism - because nothing says “liberty” like rebranding Tuesday.
The year got a rational makeover: 12 months, each with 30 days, all named after whatever was lying around in the countryside — Vendémiaire (grape time), Floréal (flower time), Frimaire (cold-but-make-it-French). As for the extra five or six days? They turned those into bonus holidays with names like the Festival of Virtue. You know, for fun.
Weeks? Gone. Now you worked through 10-day “décades” - great for productivity, terrible for anyone who liked weekends. And instead of honoring saints, each day celebrated a plant, animal, or farming tool. One day you got Wheat. Another day? The Pickaxe. Très inspiring.
It was bold. It was bonkers. It was brief. People hated it - farmers were baffled, priests fumed, and even revolutionaries got tired of figuring out if it was now the Day of the Shovel. By 1806, Napoleon tiptoed it out of existence, quietly giving Sunday its old job back.
Yet the French Republican Calendar remains a fabulous, gloriously weird footnote in history - a time when revolutionaries tried to restart the clock ... and promptly broke it.
French Republican to Gregorian Calendar