29 Reflections or Insights Surrounding This February 29th Leap Day
Yes I’m For Real
6 min readMar 1, 2024
Wow, February 29th is upon us! It’s not that this day is a holiday of note(though maybe it should be). Quite a few people were born on this day, though how they celebrate their birthday every year I could never figure out. It’s not even a market-close day or the momentous day for some eponymous off-hand celebration. Yet it’s the most off-handed day in the calendar, given it only comes once every four years. Perhaps there are quite a few things this day can teach us. Even though most of us will not find this day much different from any other, let’s see if we can reflect upon a few lessons and insights about Leap Day. And to make this even more out there, I’ll list 29 such reflections.
Here we go.
- For one, a leap day in our calendar reminds us how there is a level of unpredictability and boundless mystery to things. If we can not even track our Earth’s revolutions without throwing in an extra day every four years, it seems that everything has quite a few square holes for our round pegs.
- To branch off of that point, what are we to make of the whole leap year thing added to calendars? So it is supposed to account for that extra 1/4 of a day it takes for our planet to orbit the Sun? It’s almost like the universe is offering us a little dividend of extra time for our acceptance of transcience.
- And again, does the whole leap year thing not remind us how there is a dimension of unbounded incomprehensibility and wonder to everything? A day that appears one year and disappears the next.
- Perhaps this segues over to the startling reminder that every day is a day that will come and go but then never come again. Maybe this then is a reminder not to simply “leap” through each day. Are we leaping through each day, forgetting we can never go back? Or, are we working as hard as we can to fully occupy each day while we are experiencing it so that a part of it stays with us always?
- Can you imagine if we had a 366-day calendar and then one day would be subtracted every four years? As if we aren’t trying to play catch-up enough already!
- They could have marked the calendar in other ways. Why not add two extra days every 8 years or 3 every 12?
- You could do one extra calendar day per month every 48 years. Or add a whole extra month each 120 years! Can you imagine, a whole month called “Leap Month” every 120 years?
- How do people with a birthday happening on February 29th celebrate their birthday? Do most celebrate on Feb 28, or maybe quite a few on March 1? Would more people find a leap year birthdate to be a blessing and sign of exceptionalism, or more of a sign of abnormality or something else?
- It appears most “leap-year babies” celebrate on either February 28 or March 1. Do some people switch it up?
- And if you thought your life was going off-kilter, just think of how many people in the world only see their actual birth month and day every four years.
- There’s something to be said about adding an extra day to February, always the shortest month. Why not add the day to April or June?
- Or you could add a day to a 31-day month. My goodness, a 32-day month would be extra extra long! Wouldn’t that just mess up calendars, computers, stock markets, and the like?
- On the other hand, how many new possibilities might emerge from a 32-day month? Oh, the extra space could become a hot vacation day, an honored holiday, or some special day for people just to enjoy time with family and friends!
- But then again, February 29th does have a nice ring to it. Maybe it allows for the beginning of the year‘s quick unwinding to slow down just a little.
- And while we’re at it, what does it mean that the month holding a leap day is also the month of Valentine’s Day and the official full last month of winter in many parts of the world?
- Perhaps this extra day in February allows us a chance to breathe just a little before we embark on new beginnings and Nature’s reawakening.
- Recognize that a person who was born on February 29th will never have a golden birthday on the exact day of their birth. For instance, if you were born on February 29, 1984, then your 29th birthday fell on February 28 or March 1, 2013. Ah, the irony of an odd leap day occurring every four even-numbered years!
- Of course, the rest of us have an odd-numbered or even-numbered birthday every year but only a golden birthday once in our lives!
- Imagine if you were born on a leap day and could then be called a leapling!
- If someone born on February 29 is a leapling, what would we call twins or the like? Twin leaplings? Quadrupleaplings?
- Coming to a streaming service near you — the story of quintuplets born on Leap Day and their amazing journeys through life. The series’ title is The Quintupleaplings!
- Famous leaplings include Pope Paul III who was born in 1468, English poet John Byrom who was born in 1692, and American baseball player Dickey Pierce who was born in 1836.
- It turns out that there will be 8 years between 2096 and 2104! Go figure!
- So my first official full leap year with a February 29th was 1988(as I was born in October 1984).
- Does February 29, 1988, really seem like that long ago? Though billions of people in the world now were not even born then, so much really has not changed much. The Iowa house and farm I grew up at is still there. The preschool I attended in the Fall of 1988 is still there with the same playground out front.
- February 29th is Rare Disease Day, a date to raise awareness for rare diseases. In most years, the date obviously must be held on February 28.
- Can you imagine that I am completing this list at the end of February 29th? As I type this response, it is 11:58 PM CST on my Chrome book screen. I doubt I’ll get this uploaded in time, but somewhere someone might still just be reading this before Leap Day closes.
- Such a list has proven to be more of a daunting task than I realized. It’s not that there aren’t countless reflections I could get down(and 29 is just scratching the surface, it’s just that my time is running out and there the clock hits midnight!).
- And now I have completed the list and am sending it off now a little bit after midnight Central Standard Time. Before we sign off here, let me offer my profound apologies for any errors in my 29 musings. Feel free to point them out in response. Otherwise, I am hoping you had an amazing Leap Day in this year of 2024! Prayers for blessings and well-being to you and yours!
