Research: Let’s just call it ‘plus’ year

Leap year is counterintuitive. Every four years February gets an extra day — the 29th, a plus-one.

So why call it a leap year, when we aren’t skipping over anything?

I suppose leap is easier to say than “bissextile” — the two sixes in the year’s 366. Same goes for “intercalary,” from the conjugated Latin intercalare, which means to insert or alternate. (Apologies to Latin teachers for generalizing, a necessity of limited space.)

Why insert a day before March at all, and why every four years? Remember, early calendars were based on planetary movement and the stars. Since Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory switched much of the world to the more artificially imposed calendar we have now, accommodating numerical consistencies and religious events instead of astronomy, counting time became less exact. Three hundred and sixty-five, 24-hour days per year don’t perfectly cover planetary movements by which we mark time.

The year is actually closer to 365.2425 days, or thereabouts. Although it’s still imperfect, every four years we just do the plus-one — Caesar’s idea.

Give a miscount long enough and a slight difference becomes too far out of sync with reality. After 15 centuries the overage exceeded 16,000 minutes (roughly 11 days), so even adding a February 29 every four years is more time than actually exists. Every so many thousand years we’ll need to skip that too.

You’d think that’s what “leap” is about, but another explanation is that during “leap” year, each day jumps ahead one more. So for example, July 4 was on a Thursday in 2019, but in 2020 it will be on a Saturday, leaping right over Friday.

Even leap day leaves things off, but by a lot less. While Gregorian calendar years now average 365.2425 days, the solar year is 365.242216 days. In another 3,000 years or so we’ll gain yet another extra day in error.

Marking time exists to serve society, and societies have evolving needs and desires. While virtually everyone sticks to this Gregorian calendar at least for commerce, some Eastern cultures use a lunisolar calendar to mark time and important events such as the Chinese New Year and Hanukkah.

The American colonies inherited the Gregorian calendar from English parliament in 1751, a shift met with some resistance as certain colonists had been using England’s previously favored Julian calendar (which calculates leap year differently, and has more days). Throughout history the adoption of a new calendar at times incited violent resistance, with perceived impositions on cultural and religious independence.

Time is precious, even sacred.

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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at sholeh@cdapress.com.