A leap day is a special day indeed, it is a day caught in time, four years in time, even longer when a millenia tips over. Read on for a lazy post about a leap day. Girls if you have been standing by your man for too long and you want to be a honest woman — it is time to act. Folk tradition states, now, today is your time to act, and get on one knee and propose to your man.

A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing one or more extra days (or, in case of lunisolar calendars, an extra month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronised with the astronomical or seasonal year. For example, February would have 29 days in a leap year instead of the usual 28. Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of full days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year which is not a leap year is called a common year.

Leapling traditions girls

In the English speaking a world, it is a tradition that women may propose marriage only on leap years. While it has been argued that the tradition was initiated by Saint Patrick or Brigid of Kildare in 5th century Ireland, it is dubious as the tradition has not been attested before the 19th century [7]. Supposedly, a 1288 law by Queen Margaret of Scotland (then age five and living in Norway), required that fines be levied if a marriage proposal was refused by the man; compensation ranged from a kiss to £1 to a silk gown, in order to soften the blow.[8] Because men felt that put them at too great a risk, the tradition was in some places tightened to restricting female proposals to the modern leap day, 29 February, or to the medieval leap day, 24 February. According to Felten: “A play from the turn of the 17th century, ‘The Maydes Metamorphosis,’ has it that ‘this is leape year/women wear breeches.’ A few hundred years later, breeches wouldn’t do at all: Women looking to take advantage of their opportunity to pitch woo were expected to wear a scarlet petticoat — fair warning, if you will.” [9].

In Greece, it is believed that getting married in a leap year is bad luck for the couple[citation needed]. Thus, mainly in the middle of the past century, couples avoided setting a marriage date in a leap year.

Leapling Birthdays

A person born on February 29 may be called a “leapling”. In common years they usually celebrate their birthdays on 28 February or 1 March.

For legal purposes, their legal birthdays depend on how different laws count time intervals. In Taiwan, for example, the legal birthday of a leapling is 28 February in common years, so a Taiwanese leapling born on February 29, 1980 would have legally reached 18 years old on February 28, 1998.
“If a period fixed by weeks, months, and years does not commence from the beginning of a week, month, or year, it ends with the ending of the day which proceeds the day of the last week, month, or year which corresponds to that on which it began to commence.　But if there is no corresponding day in the last month, the period ends with the ending of the last day of the last month.[10]“

In some situations, March 1 is used as the birthday in a non-leap year since it then is the day just after February 28.

There are many instances in children’s literature where a person’s claim to be only a quarter of their actual age turns out to be based on counting only their leap-year birthdays. A similar device is used in the plot of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance.

7. ^ The Privilege of Ladies by Barbara Mikkelson
8. ^ Virtually no laws of Margaret survive. Indeed, none concerning her subjects are recorded in the twelve volume Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland (1814—75) covering the period 1124—1707 (two laws concerning young Margaret herself are recorded on pages 424 & 441—2 of volume I).
9. ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120371485815386581.html?mod=djemITP
10. ^ Article 121 of the Civil Code Part I General Principles of the Republic of China in effect in Taiwan

A lazy post from Wikipedia.

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