The Daily Campus Life section produces roundtables that cover a variety of silly yet strangely controversial topics. Whether these question the reliability of the groundhog’s weather forecast, or investigate if red supersedes pink as the most suitable color for Valentine’s Day, the Life section does not hold back their thoughts. Today’s roundtable questions the origins of Leap Day, which will make its comeback after its traditional four-year hiatus in two weeks’ time.
Karla Perez, ALE
For those of you who don’t know, 2024 is a leap year, meaning that February gets a 29th day added to the calendar. Despite what science and history tell us, it’s fair to argue that this extra day is confusing and random. Why does it exist? Why do we need it? Who made it up? Why does February only have 28 days to begin with? While I understand the actual reasoning behind Leap Day, I find it fun to indulge in conspiracy every once in a while.
I think that the scientists and mathematicians got it wrong. The number 365.2422 is so precise, so how can they be certain that that’s exactly how long it takes for the earth to make one revolution, yet no one has a logical explanation deja vu, rush hour traffic or men (sorry)? I don’t buy it. I think at some point, the scientists and mathematicians realized their calculations were off, but decided to keep the day because they have a personal vendetta against leap year babies. You can’t just cut off the day because then you would also cut off their birth date. So instead of hitting the reset button, the scientists decided to give leap year babies the gift of having to give a monologue explanation for how their birthday works. That, and the trying string of follow-up questions such as “So how old are you… technically?”
Nevertheless, for my fellow leap year babies out there, our long awaited birthdays are finally back. Celebrate big this year because it won’t come around again until 2028.
Desirae Sin, SW
Leap Day is designed to promote the toy company, LeapFrog. They’re the ones that created the old educational gadgets and toys meant to teach children how to spell, read and even do math. Feb. 29 is an elaborate scheme to get kids to think about the phrase “Leap Day,” which in turn reminds them of words similar to it like “LeapFrog.” Any explanation that centers around the Earth’s orbit or Julius Caesar’s implementation of the calendar is a conspiracy, designed to condition young minds to rationalize their mental connection between Leap Day and LeapFrog.
The competition between toy companies is much more complex than people think. Just recently we saw the power of promotion from Mattel with the 2023 hit movie, “Barbie.” From just this movie alone, it spurred on audience members to attend movie theaters dressed in pink or reminisce about their experiences with Barbie dolls. Despite coming from humble beginnings centered around teaching children how to read effectively, LeapFrog’s name was chosen to specifically take advantage of the fact that our brains will make instantaneous decisions to fill in gaps in our knowledge. The jump from Leap Day to LeapFrog is not a big one, pun intended.
Patrick Boots, CC
It’s quite obvious that Leap Days are meant to distract us from the greater plot to move the start of the winter season from October and November to February and March. Think about it: When’s the last time you saw snowfall on Christmas?
Some may say it’s because we have to make up for the nominal differences between how we measure a year and the Earth’s actual revolution around the Sun. It’s all just a cover-up of how over time, winter has been pushed further and further away from when we all originally understood it to be. Connecticut is experiencing one of the warmest “winters” on record!
Who is behind this meteorological scheme, you may ask? Punxsutawney Phil, the most famous weather-predicting groundhog. He’s making sure that we all lose sight of when the seasons really start and end, and ensuring kids born on Feb. 29 never grow up. Haters and historians say there’s math that supports leap years but remember, someone came up with “Monday” too!
Benjamin Lassy, LE
Nobody understands Leap Days. They come, they go, but above all, they make calendars difficult to read. As a history major, there is only reason to enjoy the Leap Day — it’s an easy way to segue into long dialogues about the Roman Empire. Seriously, can you believe that Sosigenes, Julius Caesar’s astronomer, was able to sort out all the complex mathematics behind adding the days to the calendar?
Rome had long used the 355 day lunar calendar, which worked quite well in terms of keeping general seasons categorized into times of the year. However, when it came time for a feast or celebration related to the seasons, they were constantly missing the mark and days had to be rearranged. Consequently, Sosigenes worked to add a few extra days scattered throughout the year to accommodate the year’s length. This brought the calendar length to 365 days. Yet, Sosigenes encountered issues with the precise measurements of Earth’s seasonal orbit that required on every fourth year, the addition of a 29th day to Februarius (February). This would line all the seasons up with their respective listed dates; a very clever and successful solution to a complex orbit-related problem.
So now you know the basics behind the Leap Day, but, as any good history major would, let’s keep talking about the Roman Empire. Did you know that Romulus Augustulus was technically not the last…
Haleigh Schmidt, AAE
I found it.