You may not have noticed, but we have an extra day this month. Leap Day, February 29, is this Saturday. For most of us, it’s just another day, but it’s existence is what keeps our solar calendar in sync with the earth’s orbit around the sun. So let’s do some calendrical history.

The Ancient Romans used a lunar, rather than a solar, calendar. Lunar months are about 29.5 days long, with years of only 354 days. Without adjustments, the Roman calendar failed to mesh with the seasons.

Contemporary Egyptians, on the other hand, used a calendar that divided the year into 12 months with 30 days each. At the end, they added five days of festivals, both for enjoyment and to keep the calendar in tune with the seasons.

By the time Julius Caesar met Cleopatra in 48 BCE, the Roman lunar calendar had diverged from natural seasons by about three months. By then, the Egyptians had developed a 365 day year with a leap year every four years.

Two years later, Caesar issued a new calendar known as the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar declared a year to be 365.25 days, with a leap day every fourth year to keep the calendar in tune with the seasons. In order to shift to the new calendar, Caesar ordered a single 445 day long Year of Confusion to correct the drift, and then enacted the new calendar.

That worked for over 100 years, but there was a discrepancy. The Julian calendar called for a technical year of 365.25 days, but the actual extra time was 365.242 which meant that the calendar year was 11 minutes shorter than the solar year. Which isn’t much, but after 128 years the solar calendar and the Julian calendar diverged by an entire day.

This wasn’t initially noticeable. But by the 16^th century the drift reached a point where important days, like Christmas, had moved about 10 days. Tsk. Tsk.

Pope Gregory XIII decided to get Christmas back where it was supposed to be, and instituted a revised Gregorian calendar in 1582. This one has leap years every four years, except when a year is evenly divisible by 100, but not by 400. For example, the year 1900 would have been a leap year, but 1900 / 100 = 19. By comparison, 2020 / 100 = 20.2 so we’ll go ahead with Leap Year on Saturday.

Leap Day Dilemmas

Leap Days bring up interesting situations. For example, if you’re born on February 29, when do you celebrate your birthday? Either February 28 or March 1. But . . . 

Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance is built around a character named Frederick. Frederick’s family inadvertently apprenticed him to a group of pirates until his 21^st birthday. But, when the day arrives, he finds out he was actually born in February 29, so though he’s reached his 21^st year, he won’t be officially 21 for another 63 years. Thus the musical launches its improbably silliness.

In the past, Leap Day was also an occasion of unusual marriage proposals. An Irish tradition says that St. Bridget asked St. Patrick to allow women to propose marriage to their suitors, because some men were too timid to propose. St. Patrick didn’t like the idea, but said women could make a proposal on Leap Day. Legend has it that St. Bridget immediately proposed to St. Patrick who declined, but kissed her on the cheek and gave her a silk gown.

The custom grew that women could propose marriage on Leap Day, and if the man refused, he must give her a silk gown, or, in some cases, 12 pairs of gloves so she can hide the embarrassment of a hand without a wedding ring. 

That custom, needless to say, has fallen out of use.

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February from Tres Riches Heures du duc de Berry 15th century.

Cleopatra

Julius Caesar. Photo by Angel M. Felicisimo. Bust may be the only surviving bust made during Caesar’s lifetime.

Sun and planets by WP

St. Bridget and St. Patrick windows at St. Peter’s Church, Yorks by Jules & Jenny

Evan Andrews. “Why do we have leap year?” History. Aug 22, 2018.

Brian Handwerk. “The Surprising History Behind Leap Year.” National Geographic. Feb. 26, 2014.

The post Jumpin’ Jiminy: It’s Leap Year first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

January is the month of Janus, the Roman god who looks both forward and back, supervising new beginnings. Hence, we who keep time contained on precise lines, call the first month of the year, January.

We contain time within calendars. Calendars tell us how many days must pass before a particular event takes place, or, conversely, how many days have passed. People have kept track of time since earliest recorded history, and probably longer. Ancient Sumerians organized both a lunar year of 354 days and a solar year of 365.25 days. To keep things tidy, they added an extra month every six years.

When Julius Caesar gained control of Rome, he inherited a calendar featuring 304 days over ten months. He found this inefficient. Besides, what could be more indicative of power than being able to control time itself? The Julian Calendar stood largely unchanged until 1582. Caesar began the year on January 1 and ended it on December 31.

The Church continued to used the Julian Calendar, but by the time Gregory XIII became pope, adjustments needed to be made to correct the length of the calendar year by 0.002% so that the Festival of Easter would occur at the correct time. Apparently the date had been drifting, because it was tied to the Spring Equinox. [Sidebar: The date for Easter still drifts, but that’s a story for another time.]

With this adjustment the length of the official year changed from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days, which actually reduces the year by ten minutes and forty-eight seconds per year. Even so, every four years an extra day occurs in February.

Despite Gregory’s proclamation, the calendar still didn’t work properly, largly because in 1582 the earth was the center of the universe. Scientists and astronomers adjusted their computations until Copernicus made his breakthrough. Our universe actually revoves around the sun, reducing earth’s status to a mere planet. The Church ignored and then denied this discovery until 1757 when Pope Benedict XIV suspended the ban on heliocentric scholarship.

Time and calendars have moved on. We can compute planetary motion with ever greater precision. We can balance our dates on paper and digital graphs called calendars. Yet as Marcus Aurelius pointed out in his often impassive way:

“Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream;

for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away,

and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.”

Yet another reason to fully embrace and enjoy the current moment.

Acknowledgements:
Featured Image: January Print, 1820s, US Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Information taken from Wikipedia.

The post CALENDRICAL TRIVIA first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

“Okay, I’ll bite.  Why are you wishing me a Happy New Year when we already celebrated the New Year on January 1?”

Excellent Question, Grasshopper.  (Historian settles in for a lengthy chat.)  The January 1 date is completely arbitrary, a result of the introduction of the Julian calendar in 45 BCE.

“Could you answer my question without presenting a 50 minute lecture?”

You exaggerate.  I can answer your question in less than five minutes.

“I’m setting the stopwatch on my smart phone.  Go.”

Did you know the ancient Romans held a festival for Saturn, an agricultural god, on December 17?  The event expanded to cover five days, then seven.  It was the most popular event of the year.  That’s why the early Christian Church set Christmas on December 25, so new converts would not feel excluded from the fun and games.  Of course, Christian celebrations were more moral.

“Seconds are turning.” (Yawn.)

You want to know when the “new year” begins.  Got it. A new year can begin on any day.  It could start tomorrow.  But it wouldn’t be the New Year with capital letters.  Roman political leaders were a bit mischievous.  Their term of office lasted a year, but there was no fixed length to the months.  A leader might lengthen or shorten the year to suit himself.  Until Julius Caesar came back from the African campaigns.  He decreed 46BCE would be two months longer than usual so he could align time into long months of 31 days and short months of 30 days and February which was extra short and expandable during leap years.

(Starts texting.)

I can hear you.  (Exasperated) The first day of the official New Year is January 1 because that’s the day when Roman consuls took office.  The Christian Church adopted the Julian calendar, later changed it to the Gregorian calendar, but kept January 1.  And thus it has ever since, encompassing the entire known world, just as Caesar planned.

“Two minutes.”

Yesterday, February 10 started the new lunisolar year known as Chinese New Year. Celebrations continue for fifteen days ending with the Lantern Festival.  This is the Year of the Snake.

“I don’t like snakes.”

Have you ever met one?  Snake people are good to have around.  They are intelligent, analytical and graceful.  They like the good things in life.  They like wealth.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Wealth means different things to different people.  Snakes like sumptuous luxury.

“One minute.  Will we get rich this year?”

Maybe.  Some think the Snake will encourage economic recovery.

“Why did you put a picture of tangerines at the top?”

That’s a new question.  You can’t count it in the five minutes.  Did I make it?

“Yes.  This proves you don’t have to go into every teeny tiny detail to answer a question.”

I like to be thorough.

“Can you briefly tell me about the fruit.”

I shall be succinct.  Tangerines and oranges invite luck and wealth, because the Chinese word for tangerine sounds like the word for “luck”, and the word for orange sounds like “wealth.”  As an added bonus, bright orange is a color associated with gold.

“So, luck + wealth + gold = prosperity.”

I didn’t know you could do math.

“Is the red envelope a replacement for plastic shopping bags?”

Better. These small paper containers hold lucky money.  Red is an auspicious color.  Lots of Chinese New Year decorations are red and gold – all to attract health, wealth, and happiness.  And, it’s biodegradable.  Where are you going?

“To buy tangerines.”

The post GUNG HEI FAT CHOY – HAPPY LUNAR (CHINESE) NEW YEAR first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.