I have my default locale set in the environment.rb as de (German).
environment.rb
de
I also see all the error messages in German, so the locale is picked up
Use the l (alias for localize) method instead of raw strftime, like this:
l
localize
l(date, format: '%B %d, in the year %Y')
See here for more information, hope that helps.
You can also define 'named' formats, a couple of them (short, long) are already predefined.
short
long