Maxwellian calendar

The Maxwellian calendar system was first devised probably in 2002, and is attributed to Andrew Maxwell, originally from Christchurch, New Zealand. It attempts to intensify Christmas spirit by altering the calendar to 13 months, the final two being Dec (formerly December 1st to shortly before Christmas) and Ember - following Dec and ending just after New Years. This is often attributed to the common leave period taken by New Zealanders and therefore varies annually, with the final day of Dec falling on the last Friday before Christmas, and Ember finishing on the first Sunday of the New Year, or the 3rd day of the New Year, whichever comes later.

Motivation
In a group blog entry in 2006 Andrew Maxwell outlined his motivation for the new calendar system:

It was born of the wish to have a christmas spirit (cs). My cs had long since died and I had found myself hating christmas. I problem I released is that with christmas activities starting in November what cs I had was spread to thin. So what we needed is to bottle up my cs, so that when it is released I will still have enough to get me though the holiday period. But this has two major problems. First without a significant event to separate pre celebration with post, you will find it difficult releasing your cs. This leads into the second problem, I good event to start releasing the spirit would be the beginning of December. Alas the 25 days from the beginning of December is to longer a period and the cs is used up before we get to christmas. So what I did was created the thirteenth month, I also renamed the twelfth month while I was at it. The new months are Dec and Ember. Ember usually starts about a week before christmas and finishes a few days after new years.

Spelling and grammar errors have been left as originally written by him in the post.

Naming of the additional month, Ember, was based on the convienience of being able to use a regular calender to cover the altered months of Dec and Ember. In addition, the naming Ember is attributed to the summer 'BBQ season' which occurs around Christmas in the Antipidean region when the Maxwellian Calendar was invented.

Modern usage
Today, the Maxwellian Calendar is still not as widespread as other systems, but it is the fastest growing and it is the hope of fans of the system that it will one day become the world standard.

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