Leap Year! The King of Gimmicky Days

I love days like today. Gimmicky days. Like “Pi Day,” or “Corduroy Day,” or when the date is a palindrome … or when the numeral indicating the day, the month and the last two digits of the year are all the same. (I’m already making plans for my Dec. 12 party, which will start at exactly 12:12 p.m. It’s going to be epic.)

Well, for those of you that are into that crap, today must be your Christmas morning. Wow — a day that only happens once every four years! It’s like the Olympics for forgettable days in winter. Make sure to pick up a newspaper and write a check today. Have your babies and cue the local media — it’s going to be a soft news day.

(I can’t wait to see a story about a 72-year-old “teenage” lady who can now finally buy cigarettes, watch an R-rated movie and vote!)

The idea behind leap year is pretty fascinating. I found an interesting article on National Geographic News that explains the whole thing.

Check out the whole article here. It’s refreshingly devoid of kitsch. 

According to the article, Leap Year happens because the earth circles our favorite star at a pace of 365.242 days. And, to keep our regular calendar in synch with our celestial cycles, we added one day every four years.

And, according to the article, it turns out that Egypt instituted a leap year system during the Greek rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty from 305 to 30 BC.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Cleopatra for keeping my Fourths of July warm and my Christmases cold.

… And I’d like to blame her for every news story that I’m going to see about old-people-who-are really-young-today and all of the “witty” Facebook posts that I’m going to encounter.