What year is it in the Ethiopian Calendar? Viral TikTok saying Ethiopia is seven years behind is freaking people out

8 April 2022, 17:34

Holly Madison explains what Cheug Life means on TikTok

By Jazmin Duribe

What year is it in the Ethiopian Calendar? People are only just finding out that people in Ethiopia are living in 2014…

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People on TikTok have discovered that Ethiopia is seven years behind the rest of the world and, honestly, it's absolutely mind-blowing.

As you know, TikTok isn't just entertaining it's all educational. Where else would you find out there's a whole rule for walking on the sidewalk? Or, that tall people have a different life expectancy to people of average height? (Ok, that might not be strictly true…)

Now everyone on the platform is talking about how the Ethiopian calendar differs from the the rest of the world. Yes, even though we might all be living on the same planet, Ethiopia is yet to experience the roaring twenties.

What year is it in the Ethiopian Calendar?

Ethiopia is living in the seven years behind the rest of the world and I'm shook. Picture: @alexservestea via TikTok, E! via Alamy

You're probably wondering why and Ethiopia ended up being behind us and it's all down to the calendars we use. While most of the world uses the Gregorian Calendar, Ethiopia actually has its own calendar called the Ge'ez Calendar.

The Ge'ez Calendar is similar to the ancient Coptic Calendar, which is "seven to eight years behind the Gregorian Calendar", the Ethiopian Embassy states. The calculations differ because they have a different birth year for Jesus Christ in comparison to the Catholic Church.

The website adds: "The Ethiopian Calendar has 12 months of 30 days each, plus five or six additional days (sometimes known as the 13th month), which are added at the end of the year to match the calendar to the solar cycle."

That means the year in Ethiopia is currently 2014, while in other parts of the world it's 2022. Ethiopia celebrated the millennium (or year 2000) on 11 September 2007 of the Gregorian Calendar. Ethiopians also celebrate the beginning of a new year on September 11 (or September 12 in a leap year) instead of January 1.

TikTok exposed me to knowing Ethiopia is in a different year from us and it's lowkey been creeping me out
— day•sha❄️ (@_dayshaVU) April 5, 2022

Thanks to a few viral videos and tweets, people on TikTok have only just realised that there's an entire country that's living a different year.

Whilst we all know that time is actually a social construct, what does this all mean? Well, according to Alex Serves Tea that could mean there's been a complete shift in the universe.

She said: "The last day of the world according to the Mayan Calendar was on December 21st 2012 if we had kept up with the original calendar but because we switched it it was December 31st 2019. So in 2020 the new world started. So we had already shifted into a new dimension and this is why everything is so different. This makes so much sense…"