Well, in the spirit of furthering my education with completely random trivia facts – I decided to look at the history of ‘Leap Year’ and how it came about.
Honestly, right off the bat, it seemed way more convoluted than I wanted to wade through.
But, let it not be said that I’m lacking in dedication to my curiosity.
Still, after traversing the rabbit hole of historical reasoning and – let’s be honest, excuses – for the whole event, I’ve realized something.
We wouldn’t be in this predicament if Julius Caesar hadn’t ruined something else – yet again.
I really believe that it kind of makes it seem like there was a laundry list of issues that he created and paved the way for his own assassination.
However, that’s not the point of this column.
I’d probably run well past my word count limit if I picked apart each and every failing by old Julius.
Basically, Julius’ calendar reform made the Roman calendar a consistent solar calendar rather than lunar or mixed – as was the fashion at the time.
And Caesar’s rule for leap years in his calendar system was just to add one day every four years.
Before introducing his calendar, the Roman calendar followed the old superstition of thinking that even numbers were unlucky.
Now, I’ve never rolled my eyes harder at such a notion, but it was a big deal back then and made all months and on either the 29 or 31.
February was consistently ending on the 28th every year except leap year.
Other excuses for February 29 have since included that it was added to the calendar in leap years as a corrective measure because the Earth does not orbit the Sun in precisely 365 days.
There’s some horrible fraction number based on hours needed to make up the precise count of days but I’m not even going to attempt to put those into print without managing to confuse myself and you, dear reader.
Math has never been my strong suit, nor have I claimed to have an understanding beyond the basics retained in my brain.
Still, Caesar can’t shoulder all the blame for the calendar crisis – though I still blame him for throwing off the groove by shoving his month into the annual calendar.
Well, his month and deciding to name August after the first Roman emperor August Caesar – effectively shoving two extra months into a 10-month cycle.
Just in case you didn’t know, that’s why the last three months of the year are in numeric order October, November, and December – also known as eight, nine, and ten - are essentially named for their numeric place in the calendar sometime around 750 BC.
The more research I do on this topic just seems to further cement the concept that calendar time is just a manmade creation and therefore entirely too arbitrary in my book.
I mean, I’m cool with going back to the prehistoric way of counting the phases of the moon for the months and so forth but I know that’s not everyone’s jam.
Still, I think Leap Year babies also get their weirdest flex to boast about when it comes to mentioning their ages.
After all, it’s still all dependent on how they wish to celebrate their birthdays in those off years and those celebrants are divided on either having their anniversaries on Feb. 28 or March 1.
