People born on February 29th look forward to the leap year, but men who want to avoid marriage had better hide when next Friday comes, writes Fiona McCann.
For most of us, it just means one extra workday, or a reminder that the Olympics are coming up, but leap years have caused no little controversy over the course of history, stirring up riots and spawning all manner of legends and lore. They owe their existence to the fact that the actual length of a year is 365.25 days. To make up for the overspill, the four quarters are collected together and tagged on as an extra day once every four years. This much most of us can get our heads around, but what we all now take for granted caused all sorts of consternation at the start.
Things began with Julius Caesar back in 46 BC, and the calendar he gave his name to, which posited a leap year every four years. Unfortunately, his calendar was off, and it took Pope Gregory to step in and reform it in 1582, dropping 10 days to bring everything back into sync with the seasons and giving us the calendar most of today's calculations are based on, which includes a leap year.
All would have been fine were it not for Britain's feisty refusal to be ruled by Rome, clinging to the old calendar until 1752, when the British finally complied and changed over to the Gregorian calendar.
In doing so, however, they eliminated 11 days from the month of September, so the British went to bed on September 2nd and woke up on September 14th, an act which allegedly had everyone up in arms, with people angrily demanding their 11 days back and reports of several deaths in the resulting riots.
Leaplings - as those who are born on February 29th are also known - only get to celebrate their birthdays once every four years, although, as Maura Moloney points out, it can work to their advantage. "I tell people that this year I'm having my 16th birthday," she says, which is technically true, despite the fact that she was born in 1944.
She hasn't missed out on annual festivities, though, saying that she usually celebrates her birthday on March 1st, rather than on February 28th. "When you get older you don't want to bring your birthday forward a day," she laughs.
TRISH O'SHEA'S MOTHER took a similar approach, when on non-leap years she celebrated the birthdays of four - yes, four - of her six children on March 1st, despite the fact that it wasn't, strictly speaking, their date of birth. "Myself and my twin brother, and my sister and brother, who are also twins, were all born on 29th of February," explains O'Shea. "When we were born it was in the newspaper . Every four years the newspaper would come and take photographs of us." For O'Shea, being a leapling has always had positive connotations, although she did recently hit a snag. "I went to the doctor last week to check my blood pressure, and she put a monitor on me, and had to put my date of birth in, but when she put in the 29th it wouldn't recognise it," she says.
Eavan Miller, born on February 29th, 1972, says she has had similar problems booking things online whenever her date of birth is required. "A lot of airlines don't do February 29th," she says. "When you're trying to put your date of birth in, they just don't have a space for it, so I usually have to phone them."
Legally, those whose birthdate falls on February 29th could find themselves in a quandary when it comes to their official coming-of-age. Countries vary over the accepted date, but, according to information from the General Registration Office here, while there is nothing in the Civil Registration Act that dictates when the legal birthday of someone born on a leap year should fall, they would be considered to have aged a year a full 365 days after their previous birthday, which would mean March 1st for the year after a leap year.
None of the leaplings above availed of the alleged special dispensation allowed them - and, generously, all womankind - on the 29th to propose to the object of their affection. Legend peddlers are still divided on where this particular tradition originated, with some claiming it all started in Ireland when St Brigid complained to St Patrick about the fact that women weren't supposed to ask men to marry them. Other theories point to England, where February 29th was not accorded legal status, thereby allowing certain rules and traditions to be ignored, among them that which decided marriage proposals should come from the man. Then there's the Scottish theory, which suggests that the tradition - or flouting thereof - derives from a decree from Queen Margaret of Scotland in 1288 that women could officially propose on leap year day.
The blessed monarch is even believed to have added the caveat that if men refused to accept, they would be fined for such rudeness, the one aspect of the endless spin on February 29th that has unfortunately been lost to the present day.