Issue #26
February 29, 2004
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Commentary Leap year day is here. Coming every four years, except on years ending in 00, unless the year is divisible by 400, leap year day is what is known as an intercalary day. The current, Western, Gregorian calendar adds a 29th day to February to keep the calendar aligned with the seasons. Other calendars handle that problem differently - the Jewish calendar, which is a lunar rather than a solar calendar, adds a whole month 7 times during a nineteen year cycle. Thriftily, the Jewish calendar reuses the month of Adar when needed, creating a second Adar in leap years. It is interesting to note that the Chinese calendar works pretty much the same way, with leap months added seven times in 19 years. This may explain the Jewish affinity for Chinese food. Leap years and leap months teach us to distinguish between age and birthdays.
Poor Frederick, in Pirates of Penzance, was apprenticed to pirates by his deaf nurse Ruth "until he reached his one and twentieth birthday." You are 21, his lady love points out, but Frederick, ever a slave to duty, explains that he was born on leap year, and will not have a 21st birthday until he is 84. Jewish Fredericks, born during second Adar, are 28 times more numerous, but would only have to wait until they were 57 years old before quitting piracy.
Various leap year customs have fallen into disuse. Leap year used to be the time when women were allowed to court men, instead of having to wait to be asked. Supposedly, St. Bridget petitioned Saint Patrick to allow women to have more say in whom they were to marry; Patrick, not very generously, allowed women one day every four years in which to exercise the right of free choice. (Thank you Woodlands Junior School in England for that information.)
Leap year day is an ordinary day for most of us; we have the feeling that there is something special about it, but not much. In days of yore it truly didn't count - the day was treated as non-existent. It was leapt over to the next real day for all legal purposes. Leap year day does not even do the full job for which it is intended. Our measurement of time is so precise nowadays that leap minutes and leap seconds are added periodically to align our timekeeping standard (the Cesium clock) to astronomical verities. These are added without the fuss accorded to leap year day; we are not usually told about them, although various scientific and navigational and transportation groups are kept informed so that their endeavors do not get out of whack.
By adding a day to the calendar, have we shortened or lengthened our lives? People in Europe rioted during the transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar because eleven days were dropped; the peasantry of George Washington's time assumed this meant that their lives were now shorter by the eleven missing days. Who is to say they were wrong
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