Leap Day Sucks... If you have to wait to get paid! Glorious if you have to wait for rent!
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Leap Day’s are an anamoly that only come around every four years. A day where a lot of woman try to avoid having baby’s, and strange traditions and superstitions pervade. Such as in Ireland, where woman are allowed and encouraged to ask men to marry them on Leap Day… If the man refuses, he has to pay penalty! :O Those crazy Irish! This includes giving her money or buying her a dress. And apparently several other European countries also have the tradition.
In practical terms Leap Day can be a VERY good thing or a VERY bad thing. For example, if you haven’t gotten paid yet then you may have to wait an additional day to get paid! Or wait an additional day for something official to go through. However if you have to pay rent on the 1st of the month, then Leap Day is glorious because it means you have one extra day to accrue said rent money before March 1st!
Leap Year's (2010 romantic comedy) Amy Adams looking beautiful in a dress per Irish tradition
If a baby is born on Leap Day, then things are made a bit complicated. Technically their bday comes around only every four years, so their technical “18th birthday” actually happens when they are 85 years old! Or, when they turn 8, they are still only two…. Additionally, modern-day data entry is made more complicated, because most web-site forms don’t recognize an entry for February 29th…. Even though February 29th exists!
This also makes it complicated to know when or how to celebrate ones b-day. Obviously, doing it only once every four years isn’t right… The poor lil guy or gal would be sad. So most kids celebrate their bday on either February 28th (the normal lastday of February) or March 1st. Or they just celebrate it when they want, like over the weekend or on a Friday. Sometimes they have extra special celebrations if they get to ACTUALLY celebrate their bday on February 29th during an actual leap year.
Or they may celebrate a “three-day weekend” bday by celebrating February 29th AND March 1st or adding another day to the bday list pretending that February 29th actually existed during that week even though it’s not a leap year. Here’s an interesting article on Leap Day Babies.
In Greece it is unlucky to be married during a Leap Year, much less on Leap Day!
An extra day, February 29th! YAY!
Sometimes telling someone you were born on February 29th recieves a “yeah right” or “seriously” reaction, and often times Leap Year babies get made fun of and/or everyone can’t help themselves and just has to make some kind of leap-year related joke. Or joke about how they aren’t really the age they are. You know. Technically.
Here is how the Leap Year works, taken from Wikipedia’s Leap Year page, which everyone should give a read.
Although most years of the modern calendar have 365 days, a complete revolution around the sun takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours. Every four years, during which an extra 24 hours have accumulated, one extra day is added to keep the count coordinated with the sun’s apparent position.
Leap Day Celebrated Via This Cute Google Logo
It is, however, slightly inaccurate to calculate an additional 6 hours each year. A better approximation, derived from the Alfonsine tables, is that the Earth makes a complete revolution around the sun in 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds. To compensate for the difference, an end-of-century year is not a leap year unless it is also exactly divisible by 400. This means that the years 1600 and 2000 were leap years, as will be 2400 and 2800, but the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not, nor will 2100, 2200 and 2300.
The Gregorian calendar repeats itself every 400 years, which is exactly 20,871 weeks including 97 leap days. Over this period, February 29 falls on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday 13 times each; 14 times each on Friday and Saturday; and 15 times each on Monday and Wednesday.
Here is a list of school-related activities and events that kids can do to celebrate Leap Year/Leap Day.
