Embracing the extra day: Celebrating leap year in 2024

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NATIONAL NEWS & VIDEO - Every four years (with some exceptions), an extra day is added to the shortest month of the year – February – and leap year is celebrated, with 366 days on the calendar instead of 365.

There’s an extra day in February.

This means that:

If your birthday was celebrated on a Thursday in 2023, it will fall on a Saturday this year. Christmas was celebrated on a Monday in 2023 but will be on a Wednesday this year.
If you were born on February 29, you only celebrate your actual birthday every four years – but you still age every year.

The science behind leap year

Earth takes approximately 365.25 days to orbit the sun – a solar year. We usually round the days in a calendar year to 365, but add one day to our calendar approximately every four years to make up for the missing partial day. That is a leap year.

For instance, because we subtracted around six hours – or ¼ of a day – in 2021, 2022 and 2023, we have to make up that time in 2024. That’s why we have leap day!

But what would happen if we did not have leap years?

Subtracting five hours, 46 minutes and 48 seconds off of a year may not seem like a big deal. However, if we never had leap years, all those missing hours would add up to days, weeks and even months. Eventually, in a few hundred years, our calendar would be out of sync with our seasons and we would have winter in December.

*Nasa Space Place

Women get to propose

Legend has it that in the fifth century, St Brigid of Kildare complained to St Patrick that maidens had to wait too long for their suitors to ask for their hand. St Patrick decreed that on the extra day of a leap year, women could propose to men.

The tradition was taken to Scotland by Irish monks and in 1288, Queen Margaret passed it into law. She decreed that the woman who was proposing had to wear a red petticoat – probably to give the man time to run away.

*Thicket Priory

A newspaper that prints once in four years

The French newspaper La Bougie du Sapeur is printed each leap year. The quadrennial paper was founded 44 years ago, yet has only been published 11 times.

Did you know?

A leap year is not strictly every four years. By adding a leap day every four years, we make the calendar longer by over 44 minutes. For this reason, not every four years is a leap year. Royal Museums Greenwich explains on its website that to be a leap year, the year number must be divisible by four – except for end-of-century years, which must be divisible by 400. This means that the year 2000 was a leap year, although 1900 was not. 2024, 2028, 2032 and 2036 are all leap years.
In Greece, couples often choose not to marry during a leap year because, according to tradition, there is a good chance that the wedding will end in divorce.
A person born on a leap day is called a ‘leapling’.

What to watch on 29 February

The movie Leap year, starring Amy Adams, was released in 2010. It is about a woman’s journey across Ireland to reach her boyfriend in time to propose on leap day. Fate, of course, has other plans in mind. Settle down with some popcorn and enjoy this funny, charming movie.