Dear LPG readers,

I wrote all this a little bit in advance and asked LPG to share it today.

This is the one year in four when we get an extra day, but my first question has to be why is the extra day stuck in February and why is February so short in general?

We all know that the earth takes 365 and-a-quarter days to get round the sun each year, and that is still an approximation, hence the need to add the extra day.  It has always been a bit of a conundrum to me that our months have such differing lengths.  It is so bad that we all are taught that rhyme when we are at school and I still find myself reciting the words ‘thirty days has September’ to be sure of the last day of most of the months if I can’t find a calendar. 

I started by Googling this subject, but the online articles I found really gave me a headache.  I have to say thank goodness for YouTube, where I found some videos on the subject, but although they were simpler than the written explanations, I have to say that they still left me even more confused than when I started my online quest to get an answer.  So suffice to say that the science behind my question can wait for another day or perhaps another leap year.

The fact is that we have reached the day that only occurs once every four years and perhaps we should do something special with it.  Tradition dictates that ladies should do their proposing today, if their men are backwords in coming forwards, and the men in question should be aware of the ’12 pairs of gloves’ forfeit expected of a gentleman who refuses a leap year day proposal. 

If it’s your birthday today, you don’t have to cheat and can celebrate on the actual day for a change, but I cannot find many other traditions.   There appears to be a lot of superstition surrounding the day though.  The Irish think it is lucky, while Scotland and Greece think it is not.  It is supposed to be a day of enlightenment for spiritualists while not so enlightening for others.   So perhaps I will defer getting the scientific and mathematical parts of my brain around trying to make sense of the rationale behind the whole thing for another four years. 

Happy Leap Year day…

AV, Mottingham

AV shares the videos that offer explanations as to why we need leap years…

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…and information about some of the superstitions that are connected with today…

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