Which Way Are We Leaping?

This Friday is February 29th, also known as Leap Day, also known as the day you'll write the wrong date on all of your checks. Most people know the reason why February is given an extra day every four years (rising obesity rates and overpopulation are increasing the planet's orbital drag friction), but not everyone knows how Leap Year came be accepted as common practice.

The origin of Leap Year has its roots in ancient Rome. When the Romans set out to create their own calendar they really didn't know what they were doing, and it showed. The Roman calendar originally was 10 months long and consisted of only 304 days. This left 61 days of winter, which the Romans just decided not to count. Obviously they hadn't thought this calendar thing all the way through. Landlords, bankers, and anyone else in a business that charges date sensitive fees were pretty certain that these days actually do count.

A few hundred years and a few revisions later, the Roman year is extended to twelve months and 355 days. They were getting warmer, but the ten-day difference between the Roman calendar and the solar calendar still created issues. To prevent the seasons from getting all out of whack, the Romans came up with the bright idea to just throw in some extra days here or there as needed to shore things up. This willy-nilly practice of adding an extra month every couple years made the Roman calendar more confusing than a sudoku puzzle, but with far more numbers and no answer key in the back of the book.

To combat confusion about the date (or to at least insure everyone was confused the same way), Rome employed an official whose sole job was to inform people of the date. Yes, "Date Announcer Guy" was an actual job title back in Roman times. Although it sounds like a cushy bureaucratic post, considering the mess of a calendar he had to decipher I highly doubt it was a stress free as it sounds. Much like today's meteorologists, I'm certain the Date Announcer Guy occasionally got the date wrong and was ridiculed for his gaffe.

"Hear ye, hear ye, by order of the Roman senate, I hereby decree today's date to be March 23rd!"
"Alright! It's payday!"
"Oops, my mistake. I meant to say March 17th."
"You suck!"

Around 46 BC, Julius Caesar decided enough was enough. He had attained the position of pontifex maximus, which not only made him the head priest of the Roman state, but also gave him control over the calendar. So now Caesar was the guy in charge of telling the Date Announcer Guy what day it was.

Julius Caesar was a man of action. When he saw something he wanted, he took it. Caesar liked Gaul; he took Gaul. Caesar liked Britain; he took Britain (or at least parts of it). Caesar liked Cleopatra; he took her… um, calendar. Yes, that's it. He took her calendar (wink! wink!).

This is where it gets really interesting. In order to align the new Julian calendar with the Egyptian model required a sync up year consisting of 445 days. 90 days longer than their regular calendar! A paraphrased transcript of the public debate over Caesar's proposed calendar change went something like this:

Caesar: I'm changing the calendar to 12 months and 365 days.
Rome: Okay.
Caesar: And I'm making this year 445 days long to catch us up.
Rome: Sure thing.
Caesar: And I'm adding an extra day to February every 4 years.
Rome: No sweat.

Truth be told, the average Roman probably didn't know what day it was in the first place, nor did they care. More people today care about what Diddy is calling himself this week (for the record, I believe it's Snuggy) than there were Romans who cared about what month it was.

So that's pretty much how it all began. There were a few minor changes over the years, but the Julian calendar stayed pretty consistent until the 1500s, when another pontifex maximus (Pope Gregory XIII) decided the calendar needed another tweaking.

It's fascinating how readily the masses were able to accept and adjust to the calendar corrections. A major change like that today would cause catastrophic economic conditions (no, I mean different catastrophic economic conditions from the one's we already have).

So why did they accept it? Perhaps it was because the date didn't have that much affect on peoples lives back then. To be honest, most were probably still using the phases of the moon, just like grandpa did. Or perhaps it was because the heads of the church were making the push for the adjustment in both instances, although any head of state with either unquestionable authority or the trusting blind faith of his subjects would wield the same power (there, I think I got all of those worms back in the can for now).

But of all the questions about leap year, there's one that's been bugging me for years. On Leap Day, are we leaping to get a day ahead, or are we leaping to catch up from being a day behind? We may never know for sure.

Perhaps we should just ask Diddy.