28 - a new holiday for a new world
For MicroBlogVember
What would it actually take for scare-quotes "society" at large to shift to using a new calendar era like you see in science fiction stories? I assume nothing short of full global unionization, which... well, is what it usually is in science fiction stories.
Aside: I know many other societies around the world don't necessarily use AD / CE for everything (as an anime watcher, I naturally think of the Japanese calendar and its era name system), but I'm not writing a post about western cultural imperialism here
Gundam's Universal Century is a clever narrative device not only because it sidesteps the plot becoming dated by taking place in a specific real-world time frame (the production and storytelling does that well enough!), but because it mentally primes you to accept a new geopolitical status quo. In the UC's case, while regions such as The Americas and Europe still exist, the conflict is judged almost entirely in terms of "Earth" vs "Space". I haven't watched it, but my understanding is that Gundam 00 is notable partially because it does take place in an AD / CE time frame and takes into account geopolitics of existing nations.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes (about which I did a first-time recap-and-react podcast with @gee-man) with goes a few steps further, giving all dates two different "years": one in the "Universal Calendar" (the UC, in what I can only assume is a Gundam reference) and one in "Imperial Calendar" (the RC, or "Reich Calendar"). The LoGH-UC was explicitly established in 2801 CE, and lasted 310 years until the rise of Rudolf von Goldenbaum's Galactic Empire. Centuries after that, rebels escaped the empire and founded the Free Planets Alliance, which returned to using the UC calendar. The series proper begins in 796 UC, or 487 RC.
However, these examples still broadly adhere to the Gregorian Calendar. No matter where they are in space, the year is still 365(ish) days with 7-day weeks. Holidays like Christmas still happen in December.
Aside: there's the amazing unintentional meta joke in 1989's Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket where someone blows their cover by saying Sydney is covered in snow this time of year (December), and the guard says, "This time of year it's summer in Australia!" 1991's Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory established that the infamous colony drop happened on Sydney, making the entire exchange absurd.
I don't know that I've seen (I probably have, but I don't recall off the top of my head) any fictional holidays that aren't either A) directly analogous to a real world holiday (Life Day, etc) or B) obviously a joke.
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