Warner Corner - February 2008

Jump for Joy—It's Leap Year!
Paul Smithson, Interpretive Naturalist/Avian Coordinator

Hop, skip, jump...leap! In an ever-busy world where we find there is not enough time to do everything that we would like, the calendar helps us out. Every fall we gain an hour of daylight with daylight saving time so we can be outside and do more activities in the light of the sun. Every spring as the daylight hours grow we revert back to standard time and we have to give back the hour. There is always some balance, an equalizer that never allows us to actually get ahead. Until this year. This gain of time is not a new phenomenon, in fact it happens every four years, 2008 is a leap year.

The basic reason for a leap year is to keep certain seasonal happenings at the same or around the same date every year. The Gregorian calendar of 365 days, which we use in the United States, is not in sync with the solar year, which is 365.25 days. This difference caused calendar creep. Every 4 years there was a 1-day difference, 40 years created a loss of 10 days and 400 years was a change in 100 days. This would move Easter to June! Easter was one of the solar calendar dates that garnered high enough importance to make the change. The days marking the changing of the seasons, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes also made the list. The Gregorian calendar is one of approximately 40 calendars currently used in the world.

Leap years officially became part of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. Every year that is divisible by 4 is a leap year. This division by four works well but is still not a perfect fix. The actual math behind the calculations calls for any date that is divisible by 4 and 100 to also be divisible by 400, so that some years are exempt. Oh boy. Let's look back at some of the historical answers here. 1600 and 2000 were both leap years, 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not. The next time we will miss a leap year will be...2100. So, that must settle everything right?

It does unless you are a leapling, a leaper, or are leaped, all of which are terms used to distinguish those who are born on February 29. Depending on which country you are born in and what calendar they work off, these folks simply celebrate their birthday on February 28 or March 1.

Leap years have played an important role as an accomplice to another special day in February, St. Valentines Day. In Ireland in 500AD, women were able to propose marriage to men only in leap years. Legend also says that Queen Margaret of Scotland imposed a fine to those men who refused. In Greece it was considered just plain bad luck to get married during a leap year.

One last bit of reality, there is no such thing as a free lunch—or a free day. Mathematicians have figured out that every 8000 years we will lose an entire day from our current calendar, despite all of the leap years. Enjoy your leap day on February 29, and remember we still have 5992 years until we actually lose a day, until then we are all on borrowed time.