by KIKE CALVO
For much of the world, September 11 is a date associated with memory and tragedy.
For me, it is deeply personal.
I was a young aspiring photojournalist living in New York in 2001, spending countless hours walking Manhattan with my camera, always searching for stories. On September 11, I suddenly found myself documenting a story none of us could have imagined. I photographed the events in Manhattan, later the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, and continued photographing the aftermath in the days that followed.
It is a date I will never forget.
And yet, thousands of miles away, September 11 can carry an entirely different meaning.
In Ethiopia, it is usually New Year’s Day.
Today, September 11, 2026, Ethiopia celebrates Enkutatash, beginning a new year while much of the rest of the world is already well into 2026.
The coincidence has nothing whatsoever to do with the events of September 11, 2001. It is simply the result of two civilizations measuring and numbering time differently.
But that is exactly what makes it so fascinating.
Because Ethiopia doesn’t just celebrate New Year on a different date.
It has 13 months.
Its year number is seven or eight years behind the Gregorian calendar.
Its traditional clock can be six hours different from yours.
And once every few years, even Ethiopian New Year moves from September 11 to September 12.
Welcome to one of the world’s most fascinating ways of keeping time.
Wait… What Year Is It in Ethiopia?
This may be the best question with which to begin.
If you arrive in Ethiopia on September 11, 2026, you aren’t simply arriving on Ethiopian New Year’s Day.
You are entering the Ethiopian year 2019.
No time machine required.
Ethiopia uses its own calendar, generally known as the Ethiopian or Ge’ez calendar, which developed from the ancient Coptic calendrical tradition. It is approximately seven to eight years behind the Gregorian calendar used across much of the world.
Why the difference?
It ultimately comes down to different ancient calculations of Christian chronology, particularly calculations associated with the Annunciation and the birth of Jesus.
Different calculations produced different year numbers.
So Ethiopia isn’t “behind” the rest of us in time.
It simply numbers time differently.
And that distinction is important.
Calendars can feel like laws of nature because we grow up surrounded by them. But January, February, 2026, New Year’s Day and even where one year ends and another begins are systems human beings created.
Ethiopia simply preserved a different one.
The Country With 13 Months
Here’s another wonderful Ethiopian curiosity.
The Ethiopian calendar has 13 months.
But the structure is actually more orderly than our Gregorian calendar.
The first 12 months contain exactly 30 days each.
Then comes a tiny 13th month called Pagume.
Pagume normally contains just five days.
During a leap year, it has six.
Think about our calendar for a moment.
January: 31.
February: 28—or sometimes 29.
March: 31.
April: 30.
And so on.
Many of us learned rhymes or counted our knuckles as children simply to remember how many days each month contained.
The Ethiopian system?
Thirty days.
Thirty days.
Thirty days.
Twelve times.
Then five or six days to finish the solar year.
Looked at from that perspective, perhaps our calendar is the strange one.
Why Does Ethiopian New Year Fall on September 11?
The first month of the Ethiopian calendar is called Meskerem, and its first day normally corresponds to September 11 in the Gregorian calendar.
The timing also makes beautiful sense within the Ethiopian landscape.
September comes at the end of the country’s main rainy season. The rains diminish, skies clear and the Ethiopian highlands become covered with yellow flowers often associated with the season.
The Ethiopian Embassy describes children in new clothes dancing through villages and presenting bouquets and pictures to households. Fires may be lit outside homes on New Year’s Eve, while singing and celebration accompany the arrival of another year.
New Year therefore arrives alongside a transformation of the landscape.
The rains are ending.
Flowers are appearing.
The countryside is renewed.
And another year begins.
There is something wonderfully poetic about that.
But Sometimes New Year Is September 12
Here’s a detail that makes the story even better.
September 11 isn’t always Ethiopian New Year.
Because of differences between the Ethiopian and Gregorian leap-year systems, Enkutatash occasionally corresponds to September 12 instead.
For example:
September 11, 2026 is Enkutatash.
But in 2027, it will fall on September 12.
It’s another reminder that converting dates between calendars isn’t always as straightforward as replacing one number with another.
What Does Enkutatash Mean?
Ethiopian New Year is known as Enkutatash, commonly translated as “gift of jewels.”
And here history begins blending with legend.
A traditional Ethiopian explanation connects the name with the Queen of Sheba.
According to the story, after the queen returned from her famous visit to King Solomon in Jerusalem, her chiefs welcomed her home with gifts of jewels. The Ethiopian Embassy presents this tradition as part of the cultural story surrounding Enkutatash.
Whether interpreted as history, legend or cultural memory, the story tells us something important.
Calendars aren’t only mathematical systems.
They become containers for stories.
Ethiopia Celebrated the Millennium in 2007
Here’s a great trivia question:
Which country celebrated the beginning of the year 2000 in 2007?
Ethiopia.
While much of the world welcomed the new millennium around the beginning of 2000, Ethiopia’s calendar had not yet reached its year 2000.
The Ethiopian millennium was celebrated in September 2007.
Imagine being able to say you experienced the millennium twice.
It’s one of those wonderful facts that initially sounds impossible—until you realize that the number assigned to a year depends entirely on the calendar being used.
Even the Clock Can Be Different
Just when you think you understand Ethiopian time, there is another surprise.
Traditionally, Ethiopians can also count the hours differently.
Rather than thinking of the day as beginning at midnight, traditional Ethiopian time is closely aligned with the cycle of daylight.
Ethiopia lies relatively close to the equator, where sunrise and sunset remain comparatively consistent through the year. Daytime counting traditionally begins around sunrise.
That creates a roughly six-hour difference between the traditional Ethiopian clock and the conventional international clock.
So approximately:
7:00 a.m. Western time = 1:00 Ethiopian time
12:00 noon = 6:00 Ethiopian time
7:00 p.m. = 1:00 Ethiopian evening time
This can make arranging a meeting in Ethiopia considerably more interesting.
“See you at three” suddenly requires another question:
Which three?
For travelers, it is a wonderful lesson in never assuming that something as seemingly universal as a clock is actually universal.
A Personal Curiosity: Two Meanings of September 11
This is where the story becomes especially meaningful to me.
September 11 will always transport me back to New York.
I can still remember being that young photographer walking the streets with a camera, hoping to build a life telling stories.
Then suddenly I wasn’t looking for the story.
The story was happening around me.
I documented September 11 in Manhattan, including the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, and continued photographing the aftermath during the days that followed.
More than two decades later, it remains difficult to separate the date from those memories.
And perhaps that is why I find Ethiopia’s New Year so thought-provoking.
On the very same date, somewhere else in the world, children may be carrying flowers.
Families are wishing one another a happy new year.
The rains have ended.
The highlands are turning yellow with seasonal blossoms.
A new calendar is beginning.
The two events have absolutely no historical connection.
Yet the contrast says something beautiful about culture, memory and our perception of time.
One date can contain profoundly different human experiences.
For one person, remembrance.
For another, renewal.
For another, simply Friday.
Christmas Can Arrive in January
Once you begin looking at Ethiopia through its calendar, other familiar dates start shifting too.
Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity has preserved ancient calendrical traditions that differ from those familiar to many Western Christians.
One of the best-known examples is Genna, Ethiopian Christmas, which is celebrated in early January according to the Gregorian calendar.
The same principle extends through an extraordinary religious calendar of festivals, fasts and feast days.
This isn’t an ancient calendar surviving only in manuscripts or museums.
It is a living calendar.
People organize celebrations, religious observances, birthdays and everyday life around it.
One of the World’s Smallest Months
Pagume deserves another look because it may be one of the most charming features of the entire system.
Imagine reaching the end of August and discovering that before September begins, you get an entire additional month.
It lasts five days.
Then it’s over.
Pagume exists because twelve 30-day months total 360 days. The additional five days—or six in a leap year—bring the calendar back into alignment with the solar year.
Mathematically, it is wonderfully elegant.
And psychologically, I love the idea.
A little month sitting between years.
Curious Facts About Ethiopian Time
A few details make excellent conversation starters.
Ethiopia’s calendar contains 13 months, but twelve of them are exactly 30 days long. The final month has only five or six days.
Ethiopia can simultaneously be seven or eight calendar years behind countries using the Gregorian system without being a single second behind them.
The country celebrated its Ethiopian millennium in 2007.
New Year’s Day normally falls on September 11, but periodically moves to September 12. In 2026 it is September 11; in 2027 it will be September 12.
The first day of the Ethiopian year is also associated with the Feast of St. John the Baptist in Ethiopian Christian tradition.
And depending on the context, 7:00 in the morning can be called 1:00.
If travel is about seeing the familiar differently, few things accomplish that quite as effectively as discovering that even the year, month, day and hour aren’t as universal as you thought.
Who Decided What Year It Is?
Perhaps that’s the question underneath this entire story.
We speak about time as though humans invented it.
We didn’t.
The Earth rotates.
It travels around the Sun.
Seasons change.
People are born, grow older and die.
But calendars are our attempt to organize those cycles.
Different civilizations watched the same Sun and created different systems around it.
The Gregorian calendar eventually became the dominant international civil calendar.
But it is not the only possible way to organize time.
Ethiopia is a beautiful reminder of that.
Thirteen months.
A different year.
A different New Year’s Day.
A different way of counting the hours.
And yet the Sun rises just the same.
September 11: Memory and Renewal
Travel has taught me that one of the easiest mistakes we make is assuming that our way of understanding the world is the way of understanding the world.
Often, it is simply one way.
September 11 illustrates that unusually powerfully.
For me, it will always carry memories of Manhattan, a camera in my hands, uncertainty, tragedy and the days that followed.
For millions of Ethiopians, the same date can mean Enkutatash—flowers, family, celebration and renewal.
Neither diminishes the other.
Instead, they remind us how much history, culture and personal experience we place inside something as simple as a square on a calendar.
Maybe that is one of travel’s greatest gifts.
It doesn’t only show us different places.
It teaches us that even time can look different depending on where we stand.
And sometimes an entire journey of discovery can begin with a very simple question:
What year is it?
Banner Note: Banner image created for illustrative purposes, inspired by Ethiopia’s landscapes and Enkutatash New Year traditions. It does not depict a specific family, community, celebration, or documented event
