It's the little things - Red Letter Days

In Sweden people often refer to "week 8" when describing when something will happen, rather than the week of February 17th, as we might in the U.S.. And then there are Red Days...

Sundays and other holidays are marked in red in calendars. Often people ask about schedules and say, "it's a red day" to signify that it's a holiday, a day off of work when official departments or offices will be shuttered. In my head I translated the idea "red letter day" = "holiday". I got myself a Swedish agenda/calendar for 2013 and was ready any red letter day or scheduling challenge sent my way. And forgot about it.

A few months ago I encountered this parking sign :

Say what?

I texted my Swedish friend who I borrowed a car from. It was 8:30pm on a Friday night. Could I park here? Did I have to pay for parking? I was confused. She texted back, "you can park there, but I think you have to pay". I parked and later that night got a parking pass until 9:30am Saturday (so I could head out for a big grocery shop before returning the car).

More recently I parked on this block a bit more regularly and was sure to move my car as close to 7am as possible. Then I spoke to a Swedish friend who is younger and therefore more recently got his license (plus averse to getting parking tickets). He explained:

The red lettered part of the sign means that on a red letter day those are the hours you can park there. The letters in parentheses are for the days before a red letter day i.e. a Saturday. Jaha. (Swedish expression of acknowledgement like "ah" or "aha")

Well, my Moleskin 2014 date book* has weeks numbered but no red letters - it's all black and let's you put in your holidays yourself with colorful stickers. Very international of it.

With a quick internet search I discovered this red letter thing is actually a thing. It arises from medieval church calendars. It's not just a weird Scandi countries thing - other places like the U.K. and even beyond Europe use it. What's up U.S.? Holding out like you do with our customary units of measure. No, this is different, don't even get me started on the sensibility of the metric system

Time to get back to week 13, er, I mean the week of March 24th.

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*purchased at a Berlin train station bookstore to break a 20 euro bill in order to have enough change for a storage locker