"Money bags" chain post explained and debunked

Someone you know may have posted or shared this ditty, or something similar. Of course, you would never fall for it. There are at least nine traps for the gullible in this small little bit of chain spam! It's time to put an end to this silliness, and then talk about the magic of the Gregorian calendar. Did you know that our 12-month calendar is really 14 different calendars? Read on!

The meme says: Good luck everyone. This year, December has 5 Mondays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years. This is called money bags. So share it and money will arrive within 4 days. Based on Chinese Feng Shui. The one who does not share will be without money. Share within 11 minutes of reading. Can't hurt so I did it. Just for fun.

This is complete hooey, as the bullet points below will show. I applaud the author for fooling so many people with this stack of inanity. Nevertheless, what this charming, clever and otherwise innocuous falsehood disguises, to the detriment of all of us, and to the "beauty of the real", is the magic of our 14 different annual calendars! I talk about this at the end.

Debunking the hooey

• Every year has seven (7) months with 31 days in it.* That's four complete weeks and three more days. That means seven (7) months have three days that occur five times instead of four. So, on average, each of the seven (7) days of the week starts one of the seven (7) 31-day months every single year, not every 823.

• The Gregorian calendar (the one we use, with Mondays, Januarys and Leap Years) has nothing to do with Feng Shui, which is associated with the Chinese calendar. Only since 1949 have the Chinese used the Gregorian calendar for daily business.

• Did you notice the self-reflexive reference?  The person who wrote,"Can't hurt so I did it", DID NOT get and share this coupon: that person MADE the coupon, and is laughing at you still if you missed this bit, or the entire concatenation of serial ludicrous statements, each piled on another until it strains and breaks credulity.

• This non-existent event is only called "money bags" by the person who created this chain-spam "coupon". There is a concept called money bags, but it has nothing to do with this.

• Sharing or not sharing doesn't effect whether you'll get money in four days. Also, if you read what the card actually says, you are supposed to share the card simply because there's some invented thing called money bags!

• As someone else said, "Forwarding woo-woo messages doesn't confer magical powers on the forwarder."

• If it's just for fun, why the threats of future lack? Share within 11 minutes? For why?

• Finally, just for completeness, it can't hurt physically to repost this, but it can damage your reputation to post spam and utter nonsense that shows you are either gullible or . . . worse. As I implore my dear mother, please do a moment's research, or just use your head, before you post.

* "30 days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31, except that quite contrary February. . ." 

A bit of the beauty hidden in what's really going on with the calendar

Leap year and the particular sequence of 30 and 31-day months in the Gregorian calendar causes a calendar cycle of 6-5-6-11. That is, if January 1 falls on a Monday this year, January 1 will also fall on a Monday six years later -- and not earlier -- then 5 years after that, then again after another six years and eleven years before starting over.

Notice that the total of 6+5+6+11 is 28. Four times in 28 years -- or on average, once every seven years -- each day of the week starts each particular month.

(If a day is the first of the month, it is also the 29th day of the month. That is, the first is the same day that starts the extra three days involved in the money bags nonsense.)

So if you actually leaf through a calendar, you'll see that most years have six different days that start the long, 31-day months, and one day that starts two.

Now here's the most beautiful and simple takeaway. If you go through 14 years of calendars, you'll see that every year (January 1) can start on one of seven weekdays, and all the rest of the days are the same for each of those seven different calendars, except in a leap year. In a leap year, April 1 is the same day as January 1 (e.g., Friday and Friday). In every other year, April 1 is the weekday before January 1 (e.g., Friday and Thursday). So there are 14, and only 14, different annual calendars!

There's a kind of symmetry in these patterns that is musical and beautiful.

Contact me to sell your home or to arrange a private showing of any home for sale on the South Shore

View all the homes for sale on the South Shore of Massachusetts at South Shore homes for sale

Follow Duxbury Homes and Luxury Homes on the South Shore on Facebook