05/02/2022
Ethiopia is 7 years behind the rest of the world, they are currently in 2014.
The Ethiopian calendar is different from that of the rest of the world, and this is because it calculates the birth year of Jesus Christ differently, owing to the fact that Ethiopia as a country has been without any Roman Catholic influence.
The rest of the world uses the Gregorian calendar, which was created in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, who made some changes to the previously used Julian calendar. Several countries that were under the dominion of the Catholic church at the time had to accept the Gregorian calendar, which is named after the pope who first introduced it.
Ethiopia, being free of any colonial influence of the Roman church, was not affected by the tides, and retained its original calendar, which claims that Jesus was born in 7 BC, and started counting days from that year on. Other calendars held that he was born in AD 1. The difference in the calendar that Ethiopia follows happened from this day forward, which is why the countryβs calendar is seven years behind.
Unlike our 12 months calendar where some months have more than 30 days, the Ethiopian calendar has 13 months. 12 months have 30 days each, while the 13th month called Pagume has just 5 days.
The Ethiopian New Year falls on 11 September in the Western calendar, or 12 September in leap years, at the start of spring.
According to the Ethiopian calendar, a year has 365 days, six hours, two minutes and 24 seconds. Once every four years, the six hours add up to 24 hours and become the sixth day in a leap year. Once in 600 years, the two minutes and 24 seconds add up to a full day and form a seventh day, which the Ethiopians call rena mealt and rena lelit.
Owing to this, the Ethiopian calendar is currently 7 year, 8 months behind the western calendar.