Happy Twenty Ninth!

 

Are you a leapling? Tomorrow is 29th February – that date that only comes round every four years because of temporal oddities. As people ascribe superstition to anything a bit out of the ordinary there are a lot of Leap year traditions many of which relate to the old fashioned concept that only on this day a woman can propose to a man. In ye olden times only a man could propose marriage so women had to wait till 29 Feb to do so. Nowadays of course a woman can propose on any date of the year if she chooses and people don’t accuse her of breaking the laws of the land nor does she change into a turnip. So where does all this nonsense come from? The answer it seems involves an unlikely mash up of the Moon, Julius Caesar and St Patrick.

 

It was Julius Caesar who took time out from conquests and big dinners to note that many other cultures calendar’s were out of line with the Roman one. The likes of the Chinese, Hebrew and Buddhist calendars are lunisolar meaning the dates indicate the position of the Moon as well as that of Earth relative to the Sun. There’s a gap of about eleven days between a lunar cycle and the Earth’s orbit meaning that they had what is called an extra intercalary month. So Caesar, clearly a man who found the whole thing waffly, created a calendar with 365 days and an extra day each four years. It wasn’t always the 29th February, there was a period when they just had two 24 Februarys which must have created all sorts of problems. The Gregorian calendar refined this idea so that a leap year occurs every year that is exactly divisible by four . Apparently, this is still causing a drift which will mean it will be an extra, extra day every 3,030 years.

The whole proposal tradition is thought to have started in fifth century Ireland. Presumably when they met for a coffee in Costa, St Bridget of Kildare moaned to St Patrick that women were not allowed to propose to men. St Pat decreed that the only day this could occur on the only day that turns up once every four years. So, yes, it was a man who chose the arrangement. Yet according to tradition this was not without caveats. In England if the man rejected the proposal he had to buy the woman several pairs of gloves, a silk gown or a fur coat to compensate for her disappointment though let’s be honest she was unlikely to speak to him again. In Scotland the woman was supposed to wear a red petticoat when proposing. In Denmark the idea of a compensatory gift was taken to the brink of humiliation for the woman who would be give twelve pairs of gloves to cover her ringless fingers.

"Will you marry me, I have a salver aflame and some martial arts thingy"

In 1980 the French added a new idea in the form of a newspaper that only publishes once every four years on 29 February. It is called La Bougie du Sapeur which means Sapper’s Candle, a reference to an old French comic character who was born on this date. In Taiwan leap year is considered to hold bad luck for elderly people  so married daughters cook pig’s trotters  for their parents which are said to bring good fortune though I’m not so sure. Similar bad leap year luck omens come in Greece where couples who marry in a leap year are more likely to divorce and if that is not bad enough if you actually divorce during a leap year  you will not find happiness for the rest of our life. More pleasant is the Leap Year cocktail you can buy in London’s Savoy Hotel that was created in 1928. Its ingredients are gin, sweet vermouth, Grand Marnier and lime juice and if you have enough of them you may forget that your proposal was rejected. 

Anyone born on 29 February is known as a leapling which to me just conjures up visions of a small rabbit like animal that jumps about six feet in the air as it travels. So what do these leaplings do about birthdays?  Eight years after their birth they are still technically two! Except they aren’t and they just celebrate their birthday on 1 March in the intervening three years. As far as anyone knows leaplings do not inherit any special powers or abilities not even to jump higher than anyone else. There are estimated to be about five million of them around at any time. Amongst the famous leaplings have been composer Gioachino Rossini , rapper Ja Rule, singer Dinah Shore, actor Joss Ackland, pope Pope Paul the third, John Philip Holland who invented the submarine, band leader Jimmy Dorsey.

You thought I'd made it up

Considering the potential for mystical imagery, super power storytelling or apocalyptic events, there does not seem to have been a lot of Leap Year related fiction around. A 2010 film called Leap Year turns out to be a romantic comedy. I’ve never seen it but the synopsis says the main character heads to Ireland to propose when her other half is at a conference there because she’s fed up waiting for him.

Maybe the Leap Year tradition needs to change and become a day of reward for everyone, an extra bank holiday every four years just because. I wonder if St Patrick would approve?