Leaping Days

Posted under Writing

Our various ways of tracking the passage of time have always been a source of fascination for me. How our clock has 60 seconds, 60 minutes. And the calendar, being oh so close to 360 days. It must have frustrated the ancients to have those 5 extra days in there. Everything would have been much more orderly if the world just had a slightly tighter orbit around the sun.

Today is of course “leap day” which happens once every 4 years or so. It is a source of consternation for anyone who has written a calendar type program, since it’s not always every 4 years. This makes 2008 an “intercalary” year, while 2009 will just be a “common” year. I hope 2008 feels special.
Not every calendar solves the problem of 365.25 days per year in the same fashion. For example the Iranian calendar uses 8 leap days every 33 years. The Hebrew and Chinese calendars use the concept of a leap month. And the Islamic calendar doesn’t even bother with a leap day or month. They simply move the dates of holy days 11 days earlier every year.

As for the Gregorian calendar, even with this correction, the calendar drifts – every 8,000 years, the vernal equinox will be one day earlier. I guess that in several thousand years, assuming we aren’t living back in caves fearful of bears and lions, our progeny may have to make some kind of correction that will be talked about for days on their version of cable news.

There are also many folks tales associated with this day. Women may only propose marriage during a leap year. Supposedly, Queen Margaret of Scotland in 1288 even issued an edict that men who refused marriage during a leap year should pay a fine, ranging from a kiss to 1 pound, to a fine gown. In order to give men a chance to avoid such a predicament, women were supposedly required to wear a red petticoat on the day they went to pitch woo.

Heaven knows what crazy rules people will make up in the next 6,000 years. I just hope they are ready to handle two leap days in the year 8,000. I doubt anyone is programming for that now, so I’m sure in the year 7,999 there will be much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth as developers rush to fix the Y8K problem. It’s always something when you’re dealing with time.