Those are the days

How it works

A calendar is a grid of named dates. “Those” is a pointing word. It only works if the listener can see which squares you mean. You can point with a list: 3 September, 4 September, 5 September. You can point with a range: the first week of September. You can point with a rule: every Thursday in April. Until you name the set, “those days” is a gesture in the air.

On 3 September 2026, “those days” cannot mean 3 September unless you are talking to yourself. Today is this day. Those days sit elsewhere on the sheet: last weekend, the stretch you already booked, the cluster you circled in pencil. The grammar is doing calendar work. It keeps today in one pile and the rest in another.

Write the year. “Those days in September” is incomplete if last September and next September would both fit. Write the weekday if the weekday is the point. A meeting that happens on “those days” meaning Tuesdays and Thursdays is a repeating rule, not a memory.

Those days, these days, and the days that were

“These days” means the present stretch: how people behave now, what the current month feels like. “Those were the days” is nostalgia: a past stretch claimed as better. “Those are the days” sits between. It can still be present tense. It can still be on the wall. It is not automatically a sigh.

People also say “one of those days” for a stretch that went badly. That phrase does not name a date. It names a mood. The calendar will still print Thursday even if the kettle broke. Do not look for a holiday called Those Days. There is not one.

If you are filing leave, nostalgia is not a form field. The form wants dates. Translate the pointing word into numbers: start date, end date, year. If you are telling a story, the pointing word is allowed to stay vague. The two jobs should not share a sentence on a timesheet.

List the dates, or the rule that produces them. Add the year so last year and this year cannot swap places. Say whether the set is past, still running, or not yet begun. If you mean weekdays rather than dates, say the weekdays.

The calendar will not guess which “those” you meant. It only prints squares. Pointing is your half of the work.

Putting a set of days on one sheet

A wall calendar already groups days into weeks and months. “Those are the days” often means a handful that do not fill a month: three conference dates, two travel days, the last four evenings before a deadline. Circle them. A circle is a pointing device that survives a change of speaker.

Inclusive counting matters once you turn the phrase into a length. “Those days” from Friday through Sunday is three named dates. The elapsed time from Friday morning to Sunday morning is two days. If you are booking a room, say which you mean. If you are remembering a trip, the named dates are usually what people keep.

Leap day can sit inside a set. If “those days” is the last week of February in a leap year, 29 February is one of the squares. In a common year it is not. 2026 is a common year. The next 29 February after 2024 is in 2028. A set that crossed February 2026 never contained a 29th, and wishing does not insert one.