Well, this has been on my mind since January and since it was still rattling around up there, I thought I might as well get it out and be done with it. This year – 2024 – is called Leap Year. What has been boggling my mind is: exactly WHAT are we leaping??? And, yes, I understand that the term Leap Year refers to the year when there is an additional day in February. And, so, this year we had 29 days in the month of February. Right? Yeah. But we didn’t LEAP anything, did we? So why don’t we call it Additional Day Year?  The years when there are only 28 days in February seem to be the years we are actually leaping something. That’s when we LEAP over the 29^th day that happens sometimes in February, right over to the lst day of March, right?

I started grumbling about this the minute I realized it was Leap Year. So, I began my own investigation. And Lawd y’all. I found so much information on this whole business that I thought I might as well set it down for myself – and for whoever else wants to read about it. Of course, you may have learned all about this in school and still remember it. And if that’s the case, then you might just as well stop reading right now ‘cause I’m not gonna be tellin’ you anything you don’t already know. As for me, I remember some vague discussions about the calendar and Julius Caesar but that was a few decades ago. And, in the meantime, my brain has been filled up with all kinds of other stuff – some of it not worth knowing. So, a little refresher course ought to blow away those cobwebs. In all my reading, I learned some things I’m fairly sure we didn’t discuss at school. Or else I was absent. Or maybe it was one of those days I was staring out the window imagining I was somewhere else.

For starters, I learned that calling it Leap Year was a way better idea (in spite of the whole leaping thing) than calling it an Intercalary Year because I’m pretty sure the word “intercalary” might be considered a tongue twister – it certainly doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it?  Just try saying “Intercalary Year” a couple of times real fast and you might see what I mean.

Worse yet, rather than “Leap Year” or even Intercalary Year – we could be calling it “Bissextile Year” – which sounds way more exotic and possibly misleading. I mean, the word has a whole other connotation for me than something to do with February 29^th. Or maybe I’m just weird. So, if I had to choose between Bissextile and Intercalary? Hmmm. Never mind. I’ll stay with Leap Year.

There are RULES – actually 3 – about Leap Year which is impressive in itself – a whole year that has its very own rules, right? So here they are:

1. All years that are exactly divisible by 4 is a Leap Year
2. Except for years that are exactly divisible by 100
3. Centurial years are Leap Years if they are exactly divisible by 400 – eg: 1700 and 1800 are not Leap Years; 1600 and 2000 are Leap Years.

The natural world was, of course, the basis for the calendar. Observing the seasons, the cycles of the moon, the position of the sun and planets were how ancient civilizations marked time.  Being a moon lover, I appreciate the Lunar Calendar. A Lunar Year is 12 full cycles of the moon – which is approximately 354 days. A Solar Year is the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun – which is 365 days. But here’s the rub: the lunar cycle is approximately 29.5 days which does not divide evenly into 365 and a purely lunar calendar would put us out of alignment with the seasons. This is where the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar comes in. He’s the guy I remembered being associated with the whole calendar thing. But it turns out, Julius was advised by a Greek astronomer, Sosigenes, to use a purely solar calendar. And guess what? Julius named the calendar after himself. (That’s the kind of thing Emperors like to do – and he didn’t give a smidgen of credit to that poor old astronomer.)

The Julian calendar fixed normal years at 365 days with every 4^th year (Leap Year) at 366 days. What was really – either cool or crazy – ole Julius created the Year of Confusion. (I am not kidding.) The Year of Confusion (46 B.C.) he decreed to have 445 days instead of 365. Then he made a 365.25 day year (just a tiny bit longer than the 365.2422 solar year) that added a Leap Day every 4^th year. Now I don’t know about you, but the year 2020 felt like it might have been 445 days long and – talk about The Year of Confusion! Well, I’m just sayin’ that we might know how those poor Romans felt that year. (I apologize for the digression. It’s that Post-COVID thing.)

Later on, a Roman King, Numa Pompilius, added 2 new months – January and February – to ensure that the calendar covered the full year. And since the Romans considered even numbers unlucky, he made 29 or 31 day months – never 30 days.

Many years later, Pope Gregory XIII noticed a timing discrepancy. The Julian Calendar had a 365 day and 6-hour year. Calculations found that 6 hours was too long. The Pope commissioned the creation of a new calendar and shortened the 6 hours to 5 hours and 49 minutes. Guess what he called the new calendar? Yep. The Gregorian Calendar. (Popes can act like Emperors sometimes.) Like the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar adds a day every 4 years, except when the year is divisible by 100 and not by 400. Then the leap year is skipped. The Julian calendar was off by 11 minutes every solar year. But even the Gregorian calendar is not completely accurate. The most accurate calendar happens to be the Persian calendar. It has an error of less than a second a year.

In 1582 the Catholic Church implemented the Gregorian calendar. Today the United States, as well as the entire Western Hemisphere, uses the Gregorian calendar. Only four countries have not adopted it. Afghanistan and Iran use the Solar Hijri calendar, Ethiopia uses the Ethiopian calendar, and Nepal uses the Bikram Sambat calendar. I can’t tell you anything useful about those three calendars because I was still focused on the Leap Year thing. But, FINALLY, in all my searching, I found out WHAT we are LEAPING. (Big smile) The word “leap” is based on the fact that from March onward, each date of a Leap Year moves forward by an extra day from the previous year. Of course, thinking about that is a matter of mathematics – which makes me want to grit my teeth. At least, I’m finally satisfied to know that Leap Year is properly named and that we are, in fact, leaping something.

Additionally, I picked up some trivia associated with the Leap Year. In case you’re interested:

• The day (Feb. 29) and/or the year are considered to be bad luck or good luck, depending on the country you’re in.
• It’s an Irish tradition that on Leap Day, February 29^th, women are allowed to propose to men. It’s known as Bachelor’s Day or Ladies’ Privilege. So bad luck or good luck might depend on your perspective.
• This same tradition exists in some other countries, ie: Denmark.
• Babies born on February 29^th are called “leapers” or “leaplings”.
• On non-leap years, leaplings can observe their birthday after 11:59 pm on Feb 28^th or March 1^st.
• Many companies do not recognize Feb 29^th as a legal day and make leaplings choose Feb 28^th or March 1^st as their birthday.
• Most employees who are paid fixed monthly incomes will work for free on Feb 29^th because their wages are likely not calculated to include the extra day.
• If we didn’t have Leap Years, this year would be 2534 since about 513 years would be removed from the calendar.

In the end, I found it fascinating that there are so many people obsessed with counting the days of the year and calendar making in general. There have been many proposals to replace our current Gregorian calendar. Proposals have included changing the number of days from the standard 7-day week, some proposed an entire Leap Week calendar, and some would revise the way the years are numbered. But for now, it seems, we’re sticking with Pope Gregory’s version. So, until further notice, Happy Leap Year!