Leap Year Superstitions and Customs

Leap year is officially any year that has a February 29th in it. While this usually happens every four years, there's actually a mathematical way of determining whether a leap year will occur and the reason for it is a bit scientific too. No, seriously, it isn't a day set by the government just to make us have to mess with our calendars or become confused. They have the IRS and the month of April for those chores.

To be accurate, while a leap year tends to occur every four years, and that's an easy way to remember it, the reality is that leap years will occur in any year that the four digit year is evenly divisible by four. Because of this, at the turn of a century, a leap year may not occur, such as the year 1900, which is not divisible by four, causing a leap year to be skipped that four year period. Y2K, besides being a doomsday prophecy year for the end of the world, is a rare turn of the century in which a leap year did occur.

So why do we have leap years? Well, some will tell you it's because the people who decided to make our calendars didn't want to complicate things so the rounded off the amount of time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun to 365 days, when in reality it takes closer to 365-1/4 days to make its trip around the big ball of fire. So instead of adjusting it by that quarter of a day per year, they decided to take that extra quarter day and store it in a big vault somewhere in Egypt and let it out only once every four years or so.

They'll tell you that it's because they need to do it for setting the calendar right for the seasons, because if they don't do this, eventually, we'd have winter in July in about 10,000 years, but the real reason for this is a government conspiracy to get an extra day of essentially unpaid work out of the government employees to make up for all the official government holidays we now have. Seriously, all you have to do is look at global warming and the greenhouse effect to know this is true, because obviously the government doesn't care one whit about what happens to the world in 10,000 years.

Since February is the shortest month of the year, and all the other months make fun of it, they decided to let that extra day they store up in the vault out and tell it to go play with February's tail end.

With such a strange day (any day that plays with a tail end has to be strange) that only happens on rare occasion, one can image there are many superstitions and fun facts about leap year and February 29th.

Happy Leap Year Birthday to You!

First, you do not have to feel sorry for someone who has a birthday on the 29th of February. Leap year babies get to age approximately one year for every four years that the rest of us normal folk do. Aren't they lucky? Yeah, my uncle, who was born on February 29th in a leap year (since it's impossible to be born on the 29th of February in a regular year), used to be older than me, but I passed him up years ago. I have to say though, he's the ugliest 14 year old I've ever met. The downside to being born on a leap year is that I hear they all die at a much younger age than the rest of us.

Of course, you don't want to be living in Scotland if you are a leap year baby, because you will be shunned as being bad luck!

Happy Leap-a-versary, Darling!

The plus side to a leap year is for you guys out there who are notorious at forgetting special events in your life. If you can convince your future spouse that it would be romantic and moving to have your wedding date fall on the most unique and special day of the year, February 29th on a leap year, then you won't have to remember your anniversary or buy an expensive anniversary gift or don your dancing shoes once a year! Plus, it won't seem such a drudgery to have only been married for a year and still be newlyweds while your buddies have to drudge through four entire years to your one, and you can almost bypass that seven year itch completely, you lucky dog.

Role Reversal for the Leap Year!

Speaking of getting married, we all know that traditionally in America, the man asks the woman for her hand in marriage and the woman accepts or rejects, right? Yes, this is changing some in recent years, but it is the standard old tradition. Well, rumor has it that on February 29th of a leap year (because you know there's no 29th of February in a regular year, just wanted to clarify that in case I haven't said it enough times), it is perfectly acceptable and even expected that the lady can ask the gentleman for his hand in marriage instead.

I'm unclear on whether she has to place a big 'ol rock on his hand or not, though.

He Said What?

The good news, ladies, is that it's rumored if a man refuses your marriage proposal on a leap year when you ask him on February 29th, he will suffer a terrible fate or have bad luck for the remainder of the leap year! So if you want to snag yourself a superstitious fellow, you can skip false pregnancies or buying him with gifts and promises of dowries, and simply ask him to marry you on the 29th of February on a leap year!

Go Greek!

Still on the subject of marriage though, since there is a lot of superstition steeped in wedding customs, if you're Greek, it is acceptable for the woman to propose to a man on a leap year, but is not okay to actually get married in the year a February 29th occurs. Even to this day, many Greek couples will not plan a wedding during a leap year, for fear of jinxing the marriage.

Leap Frog, Leap Year, Leap Over?

When I set out to write this article, in part due to the success of my recent New Year's Superstitions article (you can click here to read that one!), and assuming that most major holidays had some superstition attached to it, I truly was only curious about how leap year came to be called leap year. After all, it's an extra day, not a day that's missing, which would make more sense to me. I mean, wouldn't it make sense that every year without a February 29th is a leap year, since we leap over the 29th, instead of the years with a 29th in February?

So I'll end this article with an explanation of why we call it leap year when we are adding an extra day. It seems that hundreds of years ago in England, the British government didn't officially recognize leap year February 29ths as having any legal status. That particular day had no legal status in British law, so things such as court, contracts, etc, were not legally recognized of binding on that day.

In other words, the British 'leapt over' that day as though it didn't officially exist, and thus the name: Leap Year.