If I understand your question correctly, you want to use a single variable (or register) to store a time/date value.
To do this, you need to define an epoch, so that the variable contains the number of seconds since a certain time/date. The best example of this that comes to mind is UNIX time, which counts seconds since the epoch 1970-01-01 00:00:00Z. If you wanted to replicate this, you could Google for time.h, and get hold of the corresponding C source to see how the UNIX time functions work.
I believe that there are two disadvantages to using this method in an embedded context:
* You have to perform calculations every time you want to get a timestamp - as opposed to just reading variables, per Luis' example.
* You must make sure that the variable/register (in this case the real time counter) is large enough so that it won't overflow, based on the epoch you choose, and the anticipated liftetime of your hardware. For example, if you were using the UNIX epoch of 1970-01-01 00:00:00, you would need a variable/register big enough to handle the number 1,362,081,470 (the UNIX timestamp when I wrote this paragraph) - which would be a minimum of 32 bits. If my math is correct, you would need 32+ bits to handle any epoch time that needed to work for longer than 6 months.
No matter what method you use to maintain your clock/calendar - whether it is using a single variable/register or using the method suggested by Luis - you need to be mindful of how you will retain the value should the CPU reset. And this is why we have RTC chips! Erich Styger has written about using the DS1307 RTC chip with the Freedom Board: Processor Expert Maxim I2C RTC for the Arduino Data Logger Shield | MCU on Eclipse