Today is February 29, a date that only occurs once every four years. This makes this date a leap day, because 2024 is a leap year. But why do we actually have leap years? We will explain it to you.
What is a leap year?
Leap years are years that are slightly different from normal years. A normal year has 365 days. A leap year has 366. The extra day that is added is February 29, so today. This happens once every four years. If you were born on this date, you can actually only celebrate your real birthday once every four years, which is also strange.
Leap years have been around for a very long time. In Roman times, this concept was introduced by Julius Caesar. At that time, there were months on the calendar that only had 29 days. A year only lasted 355 days. To ensure that the seasons would not be confused, a leap day was added once every two years. This meant that every season started at the right time. However, Caesar’s calculation was not completely correct and that is why we ended up with the (leap) year we have now. Because the year lasts 365 days, the seasons coincide nicely with the months of the year.
Shifting seasons
But isn’t a year so long because it takes so much time for the Earth to revolve around the sun? That’s right, but not completely. It takes the Earth about 365 days to orbit the sun, but to be very precise it is 365 days, five hours and 48 minutes. The length of the year is therefore approximately in line with this, but if we were to let this run for a longer period of time without leap years and leap days, the seasons would shift completely. As a result, we could, so to speak, experience winter weather conditions in August and heat waves in January. This of course does not match our feelings and our rhythm. To ensure that the months and seasons remain in sync, a leap day is necessary. This way the weather will hopefully remain the same as our expectations. But of course, in the Netherlands you never know.
Did you know that there was a time when leap day was not considered a real day? Almost nothing was done on that day, because it didn’t really count anyway. Shouldn’t February 29th be a day off?
