Today, August 16, is always a difficult day for me.  On the one hand, Madonna is celebrating 60 years of life; on the other, Elvis Presley is celebrating 41 years dead.  We celebrate anniversaries – both good ones and bad ones.  Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles; this year, we ‘marked’ the 50th anniversary of the assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.  Naturally, we celebrate anniversaries to a greater extent where round numbers are concerned: 10, 20, 25, 50, 100 and so on.

Thirty-four years ago today, on what was then the 7th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley (Madonna was not yet famous enough to worry about her birthday), I began to ponder this very issue: why do we celebrate anniversaries?

I think that the principle of the celebration of anniversaries – at least, the public acknowledgement of same on a large, even worldwide, scale – is a relatively recent phenomenon.  Up until, oh, the end of the Nineteenth Century, people didn’t seem to care that much about them.  After all, it was only as recently as 1752 that the British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar, replacing the Julian one that had been the basis of the recognition of dates for almost 600 years.  The net effect of the adoption of the new calendar was the loss of 11 days – 2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752.  So, what happened if, say, your father had passed away on, say, 9 September 1751 – when did you mark the anniversary of his passing in 1752 and in consecutive years?

That, however, does not affect us, because both Madonna’s birth and Elvis Presley’s death occurred under the adoption of the same calendar.  We know that today is the anniversary of both events as they occurred in their respective years.  Or are they…?

There’s something we forgot to mention.  It’s the Leap Year, that extra day every four years that is attached to the end of February to give us 29 days.  So, your uncle died on the 2 March last year.  Do you mark the anniversary on 1 or 2 March this year and, whichever you choose, is that the correct one?  Or, are we simply picking dates and saying, well, this date is the anniversary because the numbers match up, even if calendars are jumbled up and the ‘new’ anniversary is just 30 days later or something?  We adopt a new calendar, for example, which means we lose 11 months, let’s say, so August now becomes July – and how do our minds look at this?  Are we losing 11 months or gaining 11?  Losing one or gaining 11?

There have been fifteen leap years since Madonna was born.  So, with each leap year, that anniversary, in terms of actual 365-day timeframes that we define as a year, goes back one day.  So, in 1960, Madonna’s birthday should have gone back one day to August 15; August 14 in 1964, and so on.  Therefore, fast-forwarding all the way to the most recent leap year, 2016, Madonna’s birthday should have been on August 1, which is the day it should be this year.  In 2020, her birthday should become July 31.

Or am I wrong?  Is it merely the number of the date that matters?  If I decide to make tomorrow September 17, is it then my birthday (assuming I had the power to make such calendric decisions)?  Dates to me are like car crashes – I can’t help but look even though I am repulsed by them.

Elvis Presley, for his part, was completely obsessed by dates – indeed, by numbers in general.  He lived his life by a book called Cheiro’s Book of Numbers, published in 1926 and issuing directions to its readers to take their life’s path based on numerological principles.  When, in January 1977, Elvis decided to propose to his then-girlfriend Ginger Alden, he went to that book to find the date on which the engagement should take place; after consulting it, he settled upon January 26.  The name ‘Cheiro’ sounds like some ancient mystic handing wisdom down through the centuries; in reality, Cheiro’s name was Bill Warner and he was born in Dublin in 1866.  I presume that Elvis knew that.  Indeed, Elvis considered himself an ‘8’, because January 8 was his birthday, and of all the ironies, Cheiro himself died on an ‘8’ – October 8, 1936, in Hollywood, California (where else?)  Elvis had just turned 42 in January 1977, and his girlfriend was 19.  From Cheiro’s book, he chose January 26 – two plus six equals eight, you see.  That was Elvis Presley’s entire reasoning for getting engaged on that day.  Despite this, and despite the physical evidence of a huge engagement ring, many ‘fans’ over the years have come to wonder if the engagement ever took place; in his will, which was filed on March 3, 1977 – i.e., after this engagement took place, Presley left her nothing.  Not a red cent. Yet, according to legend, he was going to announce their engagement from the stage at Memphis’ Mid-South Coliseum on August 28, 1977; which, of course, never happened.

Of course, Presley’s choosing of that date, or any other date, was of no consequence at all because he was destined to die just seven months later anyway.  By the Leap Year Logic that I used earlier, the 41st anniversary of Elvis’ death should have been on August 6.  As human beings, though, we always look for the easy way out.  Things have to be labelled, compartmentalised; but not too much mental brainpower must go into it.  August 16 is the date that an event occurs, and therefore August 16 will forever remain the anniversary of the said event.  Added to the list of complications is the fact that, in some parts of the world – New Zealand, for example, is seventeen hours ahead of Memphis, which means that the events of Elvis’ death – and, indeed, Madonna’s birth, occur on August 17.  If I read a news report now on Madonna’s birthday, and I’m in California, then Auckland is 19 hours ahead, and the time is the following day, what is the date of that anniversary?  Elvis died on August 16, 1977, but part of the world is remembering it on the 17th because from their perspective, that’s when the actual events took place.

We presume that decades, or centuries for that matter, begin with the year ‘0’.  The big ‘millennium’ party, crossing over into the 21st Century, took place on December 31, 1999, when it should have been on December 31, 2000, according to some thinkers.  Decades and centuries should begin with a ‘1’, they say.

And yet I find myself irreversibly drawn to numbers, and to anniversaries.  I hardly know what today’s date is (I always have to look at my desktop for that), yet I can rattle off dates of people’s birthdays, wedding anniversaries and so forth.  I can’t understand that, and I hate the fact that when someone talks about some event or other, my mind is automatically drawn to the date of its occurrence.  I like to ‘play’ with dates.  One of my favourite games involves Microsoft Excel: by entering the correct formula, you can work out days of the week for any date for the next eight thousand years.  Any date at all.  For example, barring any further change of calendar, I can tell you that December 31, 9999 will be a Friday.  I hope that there may be someone reading this or something like it eight thousand years from now, trying to see in to the primitive minds of the 21st Century, wondering how we survived, and themselves about to come up to that magical date when New Year’s Eve, 9999 becomes Saturday, January 1, 10000.  If so, I have a message for you:  you’re probably wrong, but I don’t blame you for clinging on to the anniversary.

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