In Our View: Don’t Take a Flying Leap

We often, according to the language, take a flying leap. Or leap at the chance. Or grow by leaps and bounds. We even, at times, leap to conclusions — although we are more likely to jump in that instance.

And while we often might take a leap of faith, it is only once every four years that we have a leap day. So, we come today to wish everybody a happy leap day, that Feb. 29 on the calendar that appears once every quadrennium. Although 1,460 days have passed since the last time we acknowledged an extra day on the calendar, nothing during that time has eased confusion over exactly why some years are longer than others.

Well, we’re glad you asked. According to the History Channel: “Put simply, these additional 24 hours are built into the calendar to ensure that it stays in line with the Earth’s movement around the sun. While the modern calendar contains 365 days, the actual time it takes for Earth to orbit its star is slightly longer — roughly 365.2421 days. The difference might seem negligible, but over decades and centuries, that missing quarter of a day per year can add up. To ensure consistency with the true astronomical year, it is necessary to periodically add in an extra day to make up the lost time and get the calendar back in sync with the heavens.”

In other words, leap day is necessary to prevent summer from eventually lurching into December in the Northern Hemisphere. And we certainly would not want to be out of synch with the heavens.

Now, some might argue that an extra day is necessary this year because we need time to make sense of presidential politics. But, in truth, ancient civilizations figured out the need for a leap year long before Donald Trump declared that anything was “yuuuge.” History.com writes: “The Egyptians were among the first to calculate the need for a leap year, but the practice didn’t arrive in Europe until the reign of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar. Finally, in 46 B.C., Caesar and the astronomer Sosigenes revamped the Roman calendar to include 12 months and 365 days. This ‘Julian Calendar’ also accounted for the slightly longer solar year by adding a leap day every four years.”

That still left a surplus of 11 minutes a year, which is beneficial if you are running late for an appointment, but not so helpful for remaining aligned with the heavens. Therefore, Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian Calendar in 1582, meaning that leap years occur every four years except in years divisible by 100 but not by 400. For those of us who find math challenging, that means 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 will not be. We think. Talk about leaping intricacies.

All of this has led to some interesting traditions, with many of them surrounding women proposing marriage during leap years or on leap days — which might or might not be the genesis of “look before you leap.” If the man declines, he is expected to pay a penalty. In Finland, the traditional penalty is enough money to purchase fabric for a skirt, and in Ireland, tradition says that reluctant men must give their would-be suitors a silk gown.

Leap day is not a holiday or a cause for celebration or even a particularly notable occasion. It simply is a quirk in the calendar created out of humans’ insistence upon measuring time in ways we can understand. And so, today, we leap at the chance to acknowledge the alignment of our Gregorian Calendar with the vagaries of the solar system. Oh, and to wish a happy 10th birthday to everybody born on this day in 1976.