South Dakota humorist and wannabe poet Dorothy Rosby explains and pays homage to Leap Day.
Ode to an Extra Day
You remember that old poem?
Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year
In honor of leap year, I’d like to add a few verses:
This ditty’s stood the test of time,
Though ‘alone’ and ‘one’ don’t even rhyme.
And February, feeling left out
Every four years gets a little more clout.
An extra day, but I’d like to know
Why put it in a month with snow?
And another thing: what’s the reason
We add it during campaign season?
Leap day wasn’t actually created to give presidential candidates one more day to campaign, but that is one of its drawbacks. We actually have it because the solar year, the time required for the sun to make one complete cycle of the seasons, is 365 days, five hours, forty-eight minutes and forty-six seconds. In other words we start every year almost six hours too early because no one wants to stay up until 6 a.m. to see in the new year.
Without leap day to make up for it, we’d be a full twenty-four days ahead of the seasons a hundred years from now. We wouldn’t even have our leaves raked and the calendar would be calling for snow shovels—just like now.
The Roman dictator Julius Caesar, who is considered the father of leap year, added an extra day to keep the calendar year synchronized with the seasons. I imagine he was trying to save snowbirds from leaving Arizona during the spring blizzards up north. How thoughtful. No wonder they named a salad after him.
I’m kidding. That was a different Caesar. And Julius didn’t have it quite right anyway. Five hours, forty-eight minutes and forty-six seconds multiplied by four equals…well, I don’t know what it equals, but it doesn’t equal a full day so further adjustments were necessary. This is too complicated for me to get into, mainly because I don’t understand it. Suffice it to say 2100, 2200 and 2300 will not be leap years, even though they’re divisible by four. Lucky! No extra day of campaigning for presidential candidates.
An astronomer named Aloysius Lilius came up with our modern calendar. He was so accurate that whoever’s responsible for such things these days only has to add a leap second to the clock every few years and I’m glad they do it. I always appreciate the extra sleep.
Unfortunately Mr. Lilius died in 1576, six years before Pope Gregory XIII officially introduced his calendar, which may be why it’s called the Gregorian calendar and not the Liliusian calendar. That doesn’t seem fair to Lilius. Maybe we should name a salad after him.
Anyway, he’s long gone, and I want to know who’s responsible for making sure those extra days and seconds keep getting added because I have some suggestions for them.
For starters, if you’re going to add an extra day to the calendar, why do it during an election year? And in February? Nobody wants more February except ski resort operators and people in the southern hemisphere.
And another thing. According to my extensive research, February 29 occurs on Mondays and Wednesdays more often than on other days. What kind of person arranges the calendar to have more Mondays? I’d like my extra days, and for that matter my extra seconds, on Saturdays in the spring and not during election years.
Still, I look forward to February 29 every four years though I realize not everyone does. Some superstitious types think the whole year is cursed and that we’d be wise to put off weddings, new jobs and large purchases until it’s over. But I think their luck would go downhill fast if they told their new boss they couldn’t start until the following year. And if everyone avoided home and car purchases every four years, leap years would be terribly unlucky for realtors and car dealers.
Some people think February 29 is a terrible day for a birthday too, but I disagree. I’d go so far as to say people who have birthdays on Leap Day are special. You have a one in 1,461 chance of being born a leapling, as they’re called. Also, leapster or leaper, not to be confused with leper which is something else entirely and it’s not lucky at all.
Less than .07 percent of the world’s population were born on leap day which makes them rare and exotic, like white buffalo, blue moons and affordable health insurance.
Personally I love leap day. It’s a perfect day for putting my old photos into albums, organizing the filing cabinet and cleaning that layer of greasy dust off the top of my kitchen cupboards. Those are the kinds of things I never get done in 365 days. And if I don’t get them done on leap day, they’re the kinds of things I can put off for another four years.
Still, I realize that an extra day isn’t helpful for everyone so I’d like to dedicate the final verse of my updated poem to those who don’t benefit from it.
It’s no help to have an added day
For salaried workers with no extra pay,
Prisoners spending leap year in jail,
And the presidential candidates who’ll fail.
Dorothy Rosby is an author and humor columnist whose work appears regularly in publications in the West and Midwest. You can subscribe to her blog at www.dorothyrosby.com or contact her at www.dorothyrosby.com/contact.
