An Extra Day for Everyone—
Lobbying for Leap Year Status
Jennifer Vernon
for National Geographic News
February 24, 2004
Raenell Dawn, co-organizer of the Honor Society for Leap Year Day Babies, is a woman with a
mission: to have February 29 officially marked as "Leap Day" on the
calendar.
Dawn
began a club for leap-year-day birthdays in 1988 and eventually met Peter
Brouwer, whose
own curiosity about his birth date led him to create an Internet community in 1997 for people
born
on February 29. Joining talents, Dawn and Brouwer created the honor society, which now boasts
4,500 members
worldwide.
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People born on February 29 celebrate their birthday
in
numerous ways, including at the World Wide Leap Year
Festival in Anthony, Texas/New Mexico. Illustration
copyright the World Wide Leap Year Festival |
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People born on February 29 celebrate their birthday in numerous ways,
including at the World Wide Leap Year Festival in Anthony, Texas/New Mexico.
Since the probability of being born on a leap day is 1 in 1,461, Brouwer
said, that adds up to roughly 200,000 people with leap-year birthdays in the U.S.
alone and approximately four million
worldwide. "It's a pretty important, special day," Dawn said.
For Dawn, Brouwer, and other
fellow "leapers," having this unique birth date brings both
advantages and challenges.
"The fact that you can say
you're 11 rather than 44. … People have always said that we're young at
heart," Dawn said. A mentor to seven girls in her
community ages 10 to 16, Dawn admitted,
"They think it's cool that they can say their mentor is 9 or 10 or 11!"
On the other hand, snafus with
legal documentation can cause headaches all around. A prime example:
Brouwer's driver's license expired February 29,
2003—a date that does not exist. For Dawn,
actually getting a driver's license with February 29 on it was a battle, since the clerk did not believe it to be
an actual
day. "'Are you sure you weren't born on the 28th?'" Dawn remembers being asked.
Lobbying for Leap Day
Realizing that Leap Day does not
jump out on the calendar to most people, Dawn has crusaded to correct this
omission in the public's collective
consciousness.
Dawn has lobbied hundreds of calendar companies to insert the words
"Leap Day" on their products. She has also contacted five U.S. Presidents to
urge the
official designation of Leap Day (which
would make calendar companies more willing to follow suit). On or around each Leap Day, she gives
educational
presentations at
her community's local elementary school and on March 1 visits her area hospital to "welcome the little leaplings
into the
world."
Exasperated, Dawn only wants the obvious to be acknowledged. "We have
an extra day—it's only been happening for hundreds of years now!"
In fact, the leap day has occurred over the past several thousand years,
ever since it was decreed in 46 B.C. by Julius Caesar as an addition to every
fourth
calendar year. This step was taken to
ensure that the tropical, or solar, year—the time it takes the Earth to make one trip around the sun—
coincided with
the Roman
calendar. This later became known as the Julian calendar.
Unfortunately, explained Geoff Chester, Caesar's estimate was not quite
correct. Chester is a 20-year veteran of the Smithsonian Institution's Albert
Einstein
Planetarium in Washington, D.C.,
and current public affairs officer for the U.S. Naval Observatory.
The actual length of a solar year is 365.24219 days, Chester said. At
first, this difference seems trivial. But using 365.25 days (the 0.25 represents
a leap day
divided by four years) causes a solar year
to be about 11 minutes too long, thus robbing time from the next calendar year. After 128 years,
those 11-minute
increments
add up to one whole day.
By the late 1500s the Julian calendar year was about ten days off from the
solar year. As a result, the calendar showed the spring equinox falling on
its
traditional date of March 21, but the actual astronomical event had
occurred weeks earlier.
For the Christian church, this disconnect spelled disaster: The formula
for determining Easter Sunday was based on the date of the spring equinox.
Pope Gregory the 13th had to issue a papal edict in 1582 correcting the
leap year calculation rule: A leap year occurs every four years except in
years
that end in "00," unless that year is evenly divisible by
400. His alterations gave the world the Gregorian calendar, used in the
Western world
today.
Time Again for Reform?
East Carolina University philosophy professor Rick McCarty became
interested in calendars as a teaching tool. In doing research into the
history of
calendars McCarty discovered many past and some present
movements to reform the Gregorian calendar system.
Two of the more common proposals are the World Calendar, brought before
the United Nations for consideration, and the International Fixed
Calendar.
Both
can be reused each year by relying on the insertion of
so-called blank days. These days would be akin to "24-hour waiting
periods before we start
[the]
calendar again," McCarty explained.
McCarty's personal favorite time-keeping method is a week-numbering system
established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Already
popular in Europe and within certain business, computer, and
manufacturing circles, the ISO system numbers weeks consecutively.
"You
could understand
your birthday or your anniversary [as] week 26,
day 3 … and you'd never need to worry about what month it was,"
McCarty said.
Rather than doing away with Leap Day, however, people like Mary Ann Brown
have turned February 29 into a public celebration unlike any other.
Consider the border town of Anthony, Texas/New Mexico, population 10,000.
Anthony is home of the World Wide Leap Year Festival and Birthday
Club
and
designated Leap Year Capital of the World.
Brown, an Anthony resident since 1951, and friend Birdie Louis first
proposed the idea in 1988 to the town's chamber of commerce. The town had
been
struggling to find a way to promote its farming community. With
cotton, green chilies, and pecans already "claimed" by
surrounding towns,
the chamber
was stumped. One farmer finally exclaimed
in frustration, "Anthony is not the capital of anything," Brown
recalled.
Reminded of the media coverage she received as a child for having a leap
day birthday, Brown and fellow leaper Louis made a strong case for a leap
year
festival. According to Brown, the chamber thought it was
"crazy" but voted for it nonetheless.
After the first party in 1988, Brown's sister, Patsy Duncan, spearheaded
the movement to have Anthony named Leap Year Capital of the World. The
title
was entered as an official request into the record of the 100th U.S.
Congress by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici and has been claimed
proudly
by
Anthony ever since.
Brown, whose five children all will be in attendance for her 18th leap day
birthday, is looking forward to a strong turnout this year. The festival
is the
only
public celebration of its kind, Brown said, and attracts
attendees from all over the world, as well as attention to this perhaps
overlooked date.
"Everybody in the world has that extra day, not just the people born
on that day," Brown pointed out. She herself has a special fondness
for having a
leap day birthday: "I call it the fountain of
youth." |
