2024 is a leap year! Why do we have leap years? And what about them?

2024 is a leap year, simply a year with an extra day, February 29, added every four years to the calendar year.

All good so far, It sounds good, but why are leap years necessary?
Basically, adding an extra day every four years keeps our calendar aligned correctly with the astronomical seasons, since a year according to the Gregorian calendar (365 days) and a year according to Earth’s orbit around the Sun (approximately 365.25 days) are not the same length of time.
Without this extra day, our calendar and the seasons would gradually get out of sync.
Because of this extra day, a leap year has 366 days instead of 365.
The short explanation for why need it, is that our calendar needs to stay aligned with the astronomical seasons.
Because the calendar does not account for the extra quarter of a day that the Earth requires to complete its orbit around the Sun, it doesn’t completely align with the solar year.
Because of this .25 difference, our calendar gradually gets out of sync with the seasons.
Adding an extra “leap day” to the calendar every four years brings the calendar in line and, therefore, realigns it with the seasons that we know.
Without leap days, the calendar would be off by 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds more each year and so, after 100 years, the seasons would be off by 25 days!
Basically, the months we call February and March would feel like summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
The extra leap day adjusts this problem, even if it’s not a perfect match.
In fact, a leap day every four years overcompensates by only a few extra seconds each leap year, adding up to about three extra days every 10,000 years!
In any case, the history of calendars has been a bit complicated with the Roman calendar including only 355 days. Reform of the calendar during Caesar’s time led to adding a “leap day”, but it was still a bit confusing and so, by the late 1500s, the Gregorian calendar, initiated by Pope Gregory XIII, began its movement into the modern world.
Its practice of having an extra day every four years was slowly adopted and became common practice in the West over the next two centuries.

Generally, a leap year happens every four years, a relatively simply to remember.
But, there is a little more to it than that.
Probably you didn’t know that a year may be a leap year if it is evenly divisible by 4!
Years divisible by 100 (century years such as 1900 or 2000) cannot be leap years unless they are also divisible by 400. Interestingly, for this reason, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but the years 1600 and 2000 were.
Just for fun, If a year satisfies both the rules above, it is a leap year.

But Leap Year Day is more than just an extra day on the calendar at the end of February.
In fact, the day comes with a variety of interesting practices and customs, as well as some superstitions that include luck and bad luck.
For example, in Greece, a superstition holds that marriages that take place in a leap year will end badly.
Probably the superstition come from a fear of starting anything new during this time. Furthermore, if one were to get married or engaged, the fate of the relationship is believed to end in divorce or the death of a spouse.
That being said, another tradition goes against that fear. Centuries ago, in fact, Leap Day was known as “Ladies Day” or “Ladies’ Privilege,” as it was the one day when women were free to propose to men.
This can trace its roots back to Irish folklore.
Saint Bridget supposedly convinced Saint Patrick that women should be allowed the opportunity to propose to their partner. From then on, every four years, women were encouraged to get down on one knee and ask their man to marry them!
St Brigid was clearly ahead of her time in wanting to balance the traditional roles of men and women in a similar way to how leap day balances the calendar.
In Scotland, and women who intended to propose were encouraged to wear a red petticoat on the day.
In 1288, Queen Margaret of Scotland passed a law saying that a man who refused a proposal from a woman on Leap Year Day may have been subject to a fine that ranged anywhere from one pound to a silk gown!
For the Danish men who refused a woman’s proposal, they had to gift the woman 12 pairs of gloves to cover up the fact that she wasn’t wearing an engagement ring.
Meanwhile, men in Finland were made to give fabric to the woman so she could fashion a skirt.
Either way, eventually the tradition made it to America, finding its way in comic strips before being made into so-called “Sadie Hawkins Day.”
In Germany’s Rhineland, lovestruck young boys traditionally place a small birch tree decorated with ribbons, a Liebesmaie, on the doorstep of their crush on 30 April, the eve of May Day.
Every leap year, girls can do the same.
And on May Day itself in Germany, leap years see only women dancing around the maypole while, in other years men join in too.

According to folklore, the weather always changes on Friday in a leap year while, another old proverb says that leap year was ne’er a good sheep year!
Perhaps it’s something to do with the weather: “Schaltjahr wird Kaltjahr” is a German proverb meaning “leap year will be a cold year”.
In Italy, the origins of the bad luck are clearer. In Roman times, February was associated with the dead, and extending it only prolonged an already morbid month.
However, many feel that to be born on Leap Day, thereby becoming a “leapling,” is a sign of good luck.
But, believe it or not, you have the rarest birthday in the Gregorian calendar!
Anyone who’s born on 29 February, on the other hand, was said to be unlucky in Scottish culture, and leaplings were predicted to have a year of untold suffering. In general, Greek, Scottish, and Germans think the entirety of the year is luckless!
Unlike the negative prediction of misfortune for engaged couples and leaplings, Reggio Emilia, a city in Northern Italy, has long believed leap year’s to be extremely lucky for whales, because they think whales only give birth during leap years.

We don’t know of any evidence supporting these theories, but we do know that during leap years and Rome burned (64), and the Titanic sank (1912).
Also, in leap years, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620), Benjamin Franklin proved that lightning is electricity (1752), and gold was discovered in California (1848).

Whatever you think of leap years, you’ll have reason to raise a glass!
In 1928, Harry Craddock, a bartender who worked at the popular Savoy Hotel in London, invented a cocktail of gin, Grand Marnier, vermouth and lemon juice to celebrate the hotel’s Leap Day celebrations.
And Head stateside for Leap Year Festival!
In 1988 in Anthony, on the Texas–New Mexico border, neighbours and fellow leaplings Mary Ann Brown and Birdie Lewis approached the town council with the idea of creating a festival to celebrate Leap Day.
Officials approved, and the town has been celebrating every four years since.
Today it’s a four-day-long affair with music, food and frivolity and, with people travelling from across the globe to join the party, held in a town now known as Leap Year Capital of the World.