Thursday, Feb. 29, also known as Leap Day, will mean a little something extra.
The intercalary calculation was made to compensate for Earth’s rotations in relation to the sun.
“Nearly every four years, we add an extra day to the calendar in the form of February 29, also known as Leap Day,” history.com says. “These additional 24 hours are built into the calendar to ensure that it stays in line with the Earth’s movement around the sun.
“While the modern calendar contains 365 days, the actual time it takes for Earth to orbit its star is slightly longer — roughly 365.2421 days,” the site continues. “The difference might seem negligible, but over decades and centuries that missing quarter of a day per year can add up. To ensure consistency with the true astronomical year, it is necessary to periodically add in an extra day to make up the lost time and get the calendar back in synch with the heavens.”
NASA.gov echoes: “It takes Earth approximately 365 days and six hours to orbit the sun. It takes Earth approximately 24 hours — one day — to rotate on its axis. So, our year is not an exact number of days. Because of that, most years, we round the days in a year down to 365. However, that leftover piece of a day doesn’t disappear. To make sure we count that extra part of a day, we add one day to the calendar approximately every four years.”
Ancient Roman ruler Julius Caesar is credited with implementing the timing tweak.
“Caesar re-ordered the Roman calendar, giving us the blueprint off of which much of the world still operates to this day,” history.com says. “During his time in Egypt, Caesar became convinced of the superiority of the Egyptian solar calendar, which featured 365 days and an occasional intercalary month which was inserted when astronomers observed the correct conditions in the stars. Caesar and the philosopher Sosigenes of Alexandria made one important modification: instead of relying on the stars, they would simply add a day to every fourth year. In keeping with the Roman tradition of messing with the length of February, that day would fall in the second month of the year – thus Leap Day was born. Caesar added two extra-long months to the year 46 B.C.E. to make up for missed intercalations, and the Julian Calendar took effect on January 1, 45 B.C.E.”
Local Leap Year babies said they’re eager to celebrate their birthdays, officially.
Walton resident Paula O’Brien will mark a milestone birthday this year.
“I’ll have been on the earth for 64 years at the end of the month, but it’ll be my sweet 16th birthday,” she said. “I was born in 1960 and, when I was a kid, I liked it, because you’re born on a holiday and it’s kind of fun and it wasn’t one where everyone else got presents. It made me special, and it still makes me special, so I love it.”
O’Brien said she plans to mark her sweet 16th with a trip to Massachusetts to visit family and enjoy an eagle watch. Memorable birthdays, she said, included her 13th, when friends threw a “big teenage birthday party and gave me things they’d give a 13-year-old, even though I was 42, like a purple phone in the shape of lips and stick-on earrings and we had a ball.” Also, O’Brien said, she turned 8 the same year as her son.
Youngsville resident Jaime Casey is planning to celebrate her son, Connor’s, third birthday. In their household, she said, Connor gets a blow-out birthday party every four years.
“We’ve always joked, as parents, that he leapt into our life 12 years ago,” she said. “Sometimes, he’s asked me, ‘Why did I have to be born on Leap Year?’ It is different, and people would say, ‘You should celebrate in March,’ but I said, ‘No,’ and I like to keep it in the same month. Some kids are born on Christmas, some on Halloween, some on Valentine’s but, for him, it’s Leap Day. It’s something he looks forward to and can plan what he’s going to do big.
“We always celebrate small with family, but every four years we do a big party,” Jaime continued. “This year, he’s going to do a waterpark birthday, which is ‘splashing into 12.’ So, that’s kind of special, doing it every four years, even though others may do a big thing every year.”
“I’ll be 3,” Connor Casey said. “I guess it’s unique. I’ve only had three parties; when I was first born, I had an Elmo and Sesame Street birthday, then a digger party, then a Marvel-themed party.”
Cassandra VanBuren, of Stamford, said her daughter, Meghan, is also turning 3.
“When I had her, people asked me what day I picked to be her birthday, because people thought I should pick February 28 or March 1, because Leap Year doesn’t happen every year,” she said. “But I told them, ‘No, her birthday is February 29, so that’s what’s going on her birth certificate.’ We just celebrate it the closest weekend to her birthday.”
And Milford resident Piper Leech is turning 3, though she was born 12 years ago. Leech said she typically celebrates on Feb. 28, “or the Saturday before February 28.”
“Every year, I have a small family dinner,” Leech said. “Then, sometimes on other years that actually have a Leap Day, I hang out with friends.”
Ricky Wood, formerly of Walton, will turn 7, though he is 28.
“I love the attention, but also I love seeing the look on people’s faces when I tell them that I’m 6 and that I’ve been 6 for four years,” he said. “Ultimately, my favorite part is the jokes I get to make. It’s a lot of fun and not many people I know can make these jokes.
“I think I was expected March 5, but my mom would always make a joke of how I wanted, of course, to make my birthday as complicated as possible, so I ended up coming a few days early,” Wood continued. “Growing up, we just had birthday parties on March 1 … and my mom didn’t really do a big thing every four years, but, once I got older, in late high school and my one birthday in college, we had a big blowout. And my friends and I are planning a really big one for this year.”
Shelby Brooks, of Brookfield, said her son, Knox Barringer, is 7, going on 2.
“We do something every year,” she said. “We can spread out birthday celebrations between two days, and we usually do dinner, presents and cake, but I spread it out, so we’ll go to dinner one day and he’ll get his presents the next day and, at school, he celebrates in February so that it stays in February. He took to the frog theme (of Leap Year babies), so he really likes frogs.”
Leap Year babies said explaining the circumstances of their birth can sometimes be tricky.
“I mostly explain it the way I understand it, which is, it’s to keep the timing right and the clocks right and the world right,” O’Brien said. “There’s little bits of time that are left over each year, and it takes four years to have a full day, and that’s given at the end of February. I have always talked in very simple terms, because it is usually to young people; older people just accept it as a day that comes and goes.”
“At this point, with how many times they’ve asked, (my peers) understand,” Connor Casey said. “But usually, when they ask, I’ll just say, ‘I was born (on a day) that only comes every four years.”
“I explain what a Leap Year is, and it’s a day every four years where there’s February 29,” Meghan VanBuren said. “And I’m special, because I was born on that day.”
“I was very misunderstood when I was a child and, for the first while of my life, I didn’t totally understand it,” Wood said. “But, once I got into third, fourth, fifth grade, I would have the teachers pitch in and explain it in a way that was more understandable, and they’d back me up. As a child, saying I was born on a day that doesn’t exist didn’t sound believable to another child, but I also told kids I was a werewolf. But then, teachers would say, ‘No, he’s right,’ and explain the concept of a Leap Year.”
“It’s kind of annoying, when someone asks my birthday and I’m like, ‘Oh, February 29,’ and they’re like, ‘Oh! A Leap Year baby!’ and then it’s a whole thing,” Leech said. “Or, it’s people asking how old I am and other people saying the Leap Year age. Some kids don’t believe me, still, I’m pretty sure, at school.”
Sources said, while special, being born in a Leap Year isn’t without challenges.
“Once I got into college, a lot of people were really amazed,” Wood said. “I was like a folk celebrity or an urban legend, and it was pretty interesting, but I was the butt of a lot of jokes and filling out paperwork is a little interesting, because my birthday is never on the actual calendar.
“It wasn’t until later in life that it became more of a fixture of my character,” he continued. “Even though I’m 27, people still kind of like to treat me as if I’m a child, because legally I am, and I get it, it’s funny. But it gets very annoying, when it comes to filling out government forms for college or jobs and not really being able to list my actual birthday as the date of birth, so I would just tell everyone I was born March 1, when it’s not the case.”
“There’s times she’d get upset if we picked on her and said, ‘You’re only 2,’” Cassandra VanBuren said. “But now she loves it and says she’s going to be 3.”
“I like it now, because it’s funny,” Meghan VanBuren echoed. “But I didn’t like it before because people kept teasing me about it, saying I was too little.”
“It’s really just getting teased about it,” Connor Casey said. “My best friend has an Elmo 3-year-old birthday card picked out for me, and I’m the only Leap Year (baby) in the (school) building (in a school of roughly 500).”
“He said sometimes he gets picked on, because it’s different,” Jaime Casey said. “We celebrate every four years, but always kept it in February. He went to the doctors a couple times where they couldn’t find his name in a computer system because of this date of birth.”
“I get bullied, because I’m one years old,” Barringer said.
“It’s better now (in terms of database entries),” Brooks said. “But when he was really little, (it was tricky) taking him to places where you have to sign a waiver. He’s going to be a big brother in the next couple weeks, and we’ve talked about how the baby will be 4 when he’s 3. He gets teased about being 1, but he also likes to tell people he’s 1.”
“It can be difficult to plan birthdays,” Leech said.
O’Brien, who also acknowledged that it was sometimes hard “because you didn’t have a real birthday like everybody else, especially when you’re young,” said her parents let her choose the day of her celebration.
“I always picked the 28th, because who wouldn’t pick the earlier date?” she said.
The very thing that makes being a Leap Year baby challenging, sources said, is what makes it enjoyable.
“Sometimes, it goes either way,” Leech said. “I like it, because my grandma, she says it’s the ‘month of Piper’ when it’s a year that doesn’t have a birthday.”
“It’s mostly minor inconveniences,” Wood said. “Overall, I like the fact that I am (a Leap Year baby) and it gives me something unique.”
“(The best part) was always because it was special,” O’Brien said. “When it would come around, things like this would happen, where someone would want to talk to you (for the newspaper), or, people at work, when it was my 10th birthday, they had a cake. Every time I have a real birthday, it feels really special, and I do love that part. I just love having a Leap Year birthday.”