Next week Thursday is Leap Day, a seemingly magical day that pops up once every four years Introduced by Julius Caesar, with inspiration from the Egyptian solar calendar, the idea of a Leap Year was introduced in the year 46 BCE. Since then, the calendar has continued with only a few slight modifications – namely, the development of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, after the Catholic Church discovered that the calendar had advanced 10 days beyond the religious calendar, placing Easter in the wrong season. The Gregorian calendar stipulates that in order for a centurial year to be considered a leap year, it must be divisible not only by 4 but also by 400. This means that the year 2000 was a Leap Year, but, if you happen to live until the year 2100, you may notice that it is a normal, 365-day year.
Although the day was invented out of practicality at the time,1 over the centuries, the quadrennial extra day has conjured up some superstitious lore and can be good luck or bad luck, depending on who you ask. If you’ve seen the 2010 rom-com Leap Year, you might be familiar with the Irish tradition which states that women may propose marriage on Leap Day. While this tradition originated in Ireland, it has since spread to Scotland and beyond. A secondary aspect of the tradition, practiced in certain regions, stipulates that a man who denies a Leap Day proposal must pay a fine, or in some retellings, offer multiple pairs of fine gloves, to the woman whose proposal he denied
This piece of Leap Day folklore is one of the few that consider Leap Day to be good luck – many consider the extra day, and even the entire year to be a bad omen. Greek superstitions hold that leap years are unlucky years for marriage and that weddings held during a leap year are more likely to end in divorce. Having a wedding on Leap Day itself is considered the most unlucky date possible! Italy also considers leap years unlucky, and many Italians are rumored to avoid making large purchases during them.
In America, Leap Day is mostly just considered an extra day tacked onto the end of the shortest month of the year. But as some other countries have proved, that extra day is the perfect opportunity to create a new tradition or story. What will you do with your extra day this year? If nothing else, enjoy the reminder that nothing is real and time is a social construct.
- But in this day and age, is it really practical? Isn’t time just a societal construct? Between leap day and daylight savings time, aren’t the powers that be just trying to confuse us at every chance they get? I say we stand up and declare that we remove Leap Day altogether! Or have February 29 come every year! Or what the heck, make February a normally lengthed month! End the unnecessary confusion and give me some form of consistency for once in my life! ↩︎
