Trace the leap year back to its origin, and you’ll find none other than…Julius Caesar. That’s right: the enduring face of the Roman Empire is responsible for the enduring tradition of this quadrennial day. The addition of an extra day every four years actually improved the accuracy of the Roman solar calendar, better aligning the passage of days with the Earth’s movements around the sun.
And unlike other decisions more commonly made on the emperor’s whim, this 45 BC leap year decree was well-informed. We have Caesar’s team of astute astrologists to thank for that one.
You could say that many good things come every four years: the Olympics and the FIFA World Cups are top of mind. Plus, they’re all the more exciting given how infrequently they occur.
Leap Days, though? They’re more of a wild card. Lacking the fanfare of a sporting event, they’re painstakingly practical. They may even beg more existential questions like: What is time? Is tracking it a means of measurement or a futile attempt for control? Was Nietzsche right when he said this is all just an “eternal recurrence,” a flat circle?
In any case, it’s up to us to inject the fun. It’s unusual, it’s unique, and it only comes once every four years! Luckily plenty of cultures have risen to the occasion by embracing the novelty of the day with their own traditions.
From Ireland to Italy, we’ll take a look at the many ways that people around the world choose to celebrate below. Plus, we’ll answer all your burning questions on leap years with more on where they came from, which calendars actually acknowledge them, and what happens when a birthday falls on February 29.
What is a leap year?
Most of the time, February has 28 days. These are called “common years.” In a leap year, an extra day is added to February. This is because a year is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun—a solar year—but that doesn’t happen in precisely 365 days that each last 24 hours (a total of 8,760 hours). Rather, it happens in 365 days plus 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds…so that extra time adds up after a while.
A leap day is essentially an accumulation of those extra hours, minutes and seconds. When it gets to the point of overflowing by a whole day, we make up for it on the calendar with this extra day in February. Otherwise, we’d be out of synch before long.
Contrary to popular belief, leap years do not always happen every four years. Since those spillover hours and minutes don’t add up to precisely 24 hours, adjustments are made there as well. This keeps the calendar and the seasons moving on a predictable, cyclical basis.
In the name of accuracy, leap year calendars have been adjusted over time. In 1582, well after Caesar implemented leap years in the Julian Calendar, a team of Italian astrologists identified persistent issues with this “spillover” time. The issue?
Roman astrologists had miscalculated the length of the solar year by a whopping 11 minutes. To account for the accumulated gap—a calendar that was roughly 10 days off from the actual solar cycle—Pope Gregory created the Gregorian calendar, which many countries continue to use today. You’ll notice another interesting addition on this calendar in that leap years don’t strictly occur every four years. Jump to the Leap Year Calculation section for more!
Is 2024 a leap year?
Yes, February 2024 will have 29 days, so it is a leap year! If you found yourself with ambitious resolutions at the start of the year, this should come as good news. Luxuriate in those bonus 24 hours to reach your goals even faster.
Speaking of resolutions: have you tried learning a new language? With all this extra time, it might be worth adding to the list. With Rosetta Stone, you can check off a lesson in 10 minutes or less. Time is precious, and we’re here to help you make the most of it.
List of leap years
Here’s a list of leap years from 1900-2100. And yes, it’s complete, but 1900 and 2100 are not leap years. Jump to the Leap Year Calculation section to learn why!
- 1904
- 1908
- 1912
- 1916
- 1920
- 1924
- 1928
- 1932
- 1936
- 1940
- 1944
- 1948
- 1952
- 1956
- 1960
- 1964
- 1968
- 1972
- 1976
- 1980
- 1984
- 1988
- 1992
- 1996
- 2000
- 2004
- 2008
- 2012
- 2016
- 2020
- 2024
- 2028
- 2032
- 2036
- 2040
- 2044
- 2048
- 2052
- 2056
- 2060
- 2064
- 2068
- 2072
- 2076
- 2080
- 2084
- 2088
- 2092
- 2096
Leap Day traditions around the world
A handful of cultures have fun flipping long standing traditions on Leap Day, but others believe these days are bad luck. That luck can last the whole day or the whole year, depending on the superstition. Don’t take things too seriously though. It really is all in good fun. Let’s take a look at the good and the bad of international Leap Day beliefs!
Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere
Despite women’s liberation, it’s still pretty common for men to propose to women when it comes to heterosexual relationships. In Ireland and Scotland though, women are known to propose to men during a leap year. Given that leap years sometimes only happen every eight years, some women may have a very long courtship!
Germany
Villages in Germany hold the Maibaum (Maypole or May tree) every year starting on the night of April 30. Men decorate a tree, usually a birch, with colored streamers or ribbons and put it in front of their beloved’s house. Then, they guard it all night long. The next day everyone dances the Maypole Dance. When it’s a leap year though, roles are reversed: wives, girlfriends, and even secret admirers get to place their adorned tree in front of the house of the person they love, thus making their declaration public. During leap years, only the women dance the Maypole Dance.
Anthony, USA
This town, which straddles Texas and New Mexico, calls itself the Leap Year Capital of the World, and it holds a festival usually lasting a couple of days every leap year. Celebrating those born on February 29 known as “leaplings,” the festival features barbeque, live cumbia bands, and lucha libre (Mexican-style wrestling). Cumbia is a tropical music style originating in Colombia that’s very popular in Mexico, and many parts of the United States where Mexicans and Mexican Americans live.
Greece
We might say that this is an anti-Leap Year tradition. In Greece in particular, they believe that marriages held during a leap year always end badly. For those who do end up getting a divorce–and we’re guessing they’re not just folks who get married in a leap year–Greeks believe that if you do it on Leap Day, you’ll never find love again.
France
The French have gotten a special Leap Day newspaper during every leap year since 1980: La Bougie du Sapeur, which is also distributed in other French-speaking countries. Bougie is a candle and sapeur means “sapper,” essentially a military trench specialist. Satirical in nature, the broadsheet features an old comic book character, Camember—yep, close to the French cheese’s name—who was born on Leap Day. La Bougie du Sapeur is the least frequently published newspaper in the world.
Italy
Anno bisesto, anno funesto is what they say in Italy about leap years. The little saying, which rhymes, means “Leap year, sorrowful year.” Italians think leap years are unlucky, so they avoid making big purchases during years with an extra day in them. Too bad for the real estate agents and car salesmen.
Are there any countries that don’t acknowledge leap years?
After Gregory’s papal bull, most countries and territories adapted his calendar over time, although Greece and Russia waited until the early twentieth century to do so.
Some countries use a slightly modified Gregorian calendar. Most other countries that don’t use the Gregorian calendar still have some way to adjust between their calendar and the Gregorian one, and nowadays, there are online converters for that.
Which calendar a culture uses also depends on religious factors. We’ve already mentioned that many Arab countries use the Gregorian calendar for secular situations alongside the Islamic one for religious events. But some Orthodox Christian churches use a modified Julian calendar. The Hebrew calendar is used to set the dates for Jewish holidays and other religious events. This calendar adds on an extra lunar month every few years.
Some non-Arab countries that don’t use the Gregorian calendar as their official one include Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Thailand and Nepal. Yet these countries often add in a leap day or leap month from time to time.
How to calculate a leap year
One of the Italian scientists behind the Gregorian calendar devised the leap year calculation we know today. Because, as we’ve stated above, leap years don’t strictly occur every four years. Instead, we have a two-part formula or rule-of-thumb:
- If it’s a leap year, it must be divisible by 4.
- If you apply the above formula to a new century (a year divisible by 100), it must also be divisible by 400.
If the year does not fit the above criteria, then it’s not a leap year. 365 ordinary days it is!
What happens if your birthday falls on a leap day?
No canceled birthday parties here. If you were born on February 29, you still get to celebrate your birthday every year. For those leap year babies, you’ll celebrate on February 28 or March 1 on ordinary years.
Some places like Taiwan have legally formalized in their civil codes that leaplings celebrate their birthday on February 28 for common years.
Celebrities and other famous people with leap year birthdays
Of course there are some renowned people who were born on February 29. We’ve listed a few interesting picks in historical order below. By the way, there have been a few serial killers who also claimed the title of leap year baby, but we’ll spare you those details.
- Ann Lee (1736-1784): Lee was an Englishwoman who immigrated to New York state and later founded the religious group known as the Shakers.
- Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868): Most well-known for his comedic opera The Barber of Seville, Rossini was born in Italy and composed 39 operas in his lifetime.
- Jimmy Dorsey (1904-1957): Dorsey was a famous jazz musician and big band leader.
- Dinah Shore (1916-1994): Born in Tennessee in a leap year, Dinah Shore was an actress and singer who also had her own radio program. Shore failed her singing audition for another leap year baby: Jimmy Dorsey.
- Mary Ann Brown (1932-2021): A leap baby herself and a Texan, Brown convinced the governors of Texas and New Mexico, in 1988, to make Anthony, a bistate city, the Leap Year Capital of the world. There’s been a festival every leap year since.
- Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón (1972-): Pérez-Castejón is the Prime Minister of Spain and the Secretary General of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.
- Ja Rule (1976-): Ja Rule is a rap musician from New York City famous for the top hit he made with Ashanti called “Always on Time.”
What about the movement to eliminate leap years?
Leap years are convenient for solar cycles—less so for financial ones. The extra day in February can wreak havoc on financial quarterly reports and interest rates given that financial quarters are 13-weeks long, and interest rates are calculated using a 30-day month.
Economic professors Steve Hanke and Richard Henry at Johns Hopkins University are advocating for a permanent calendar that includes not just February 29 but February 30! Each quarter would have two 30-day months followed by a 31-day month.
With the Hanke-Henry calendar, all years would start on a Monday, too. This calendar is 364 days long, but every five or six years, we’d get an extra week in December—essentially a leap week. The creators of this calendar say it will make business life easier. Plus birthdays would be unaffected, always falling on the same day.
Still, we’re wondering how leap week babies would celebrate their birthdays during non-leap week years.
Explore the world with Rosetta Stone
Leap years really are what you make of them. Take the opportunity to propose to the one you love or use it as an excuse to avoid buying that new car. Whatever you choose, have fun with the lore and enjoy knowing the real, very practical reasons behind Leap Day!
Leap Day speaks to a wider diversity of culture, from superstitions to different modes of secular and religious calendars. It’s just one of many reminders of how learning about cultures brings us closer together with new people and places to love.
One of the best paths to understanding a culture is learning a language, and with Rosetta Stone you can do that in an accessible way that doesn’t require rote memorization. Instead, you’ll get small, immersive lessons designed to be consumed at home or on the go, so you can leap into a new culture quickly!
Written by Rowena Galavitz
Rowena Galavitz is a Spanish translator, bilingual copy editor, and language and literature instructor with three master’s degrees who loves Spanish and all things Mexico.
0 Commentaires