Posted Feb 19
So, what are you going to do with your extra day?
Dreams of songwriters describe many "if only" options over the airwaves. Poetic lyrics old and new, lilt their hymns for me and you. Lacking such noble talents, I tend to troll the depths of "the rough" to come up with considerably less altruistic or wistful drivel. Such as: Why does February only have 28 days and why do they call it Leap Year when it gets 29?
Well, let's see if we can figure that out. First, we need to consider who hosed February. Well, it seems we can blame good old Romulus. Before Rome was founded, a year was divided into ten months. The Romans came along and added two, renamed them all, and then modified the number of days to coincide with the initial sighting of a new full moon, or lunation. (On a side note, these machinations were viewed by many religious orders as heresy or lunarsy, from whence our terms lunacy and lunatic were spawned. Or not). Furthermore,
January was named after the Roman god Janus. March was named after the Roman god Mars. Between these two lies February, named after Februa, the festival of purification. Well, there you have it. See, the Romans really only liked to do two things: party hearty and fight. So after a month-long New Year's bacchanalia they had to sober up before they could start fighting again. Since you don't want to incur the wrath of a god, you give their months 31 days. Since you can only stand so much purification between your annual boozefest and getting back to work slaying people, you make that month as short as possible and just give it the minimum 28. Sound wisdom, indeed! Now that we have that solved, let's deal with the Leap Year thing which I claim to be a misnomer.
First, we need to consider who did the first leaping. Well, it seems we can blame some good old monks. Back in the day, monks liked to do two things: brew mead,(a distilled brew of honey, water, and yeast), and contemplate stuff. Historians generally agree the contemplating of stuff was preceded by the quaffing of copious quantitites of quality distillage. This tradition lasted for hundreds of years and came to be known as the "Mead Dulled Ages". Anyway, sometime during the mid 1500's a bunch of monks ran out of mead and leaped to the conclusion that the Julian calendar was about ten days off when their bees fell ten days behind in their honey quota. A few years later, Pope Gregory The Something decided he would keep his monks happy by ordering a hundred casks of mead and a new calendar. The same one we use today.
Since that time, in order to avoid running out of mead, we go three years in a row with about a quarter of a day missing from the calendar because the boxes the days are put in don't have lines inside of them. And then along comes the fourth year when we now have a whole day missing. So to get all caught up we have to add a day. We place it in February's month because we feel sorry for it since it gets ripped off in the other years.
Therefore, in light of all these fore facts, shouldn't the other three years be called leap years since we "leaped" right over those six hours and went right into the next year? And what we currently call a leap year should be called a Catch Up or Make Up year. Or we could honor the good old monks and call it a Mead Year and make it a national holiday while we're at it! I don't think we can have too many holidays.
Whew! Now that I'm finished dribbleing the drivel, here's my plan for my extra day:
First, because I actually tried some homemade rather than monkmade mead once and swore I'd never again allow the foul swill to pass my palate, I shall add a splop of honey to my morning cup of tea before I ... Second, call my buddy, Pete and let him know that since his birthday was a couple weeks ago and mine is still a couple months off, he will be a year older than me one day longer than usual. I'm liking that thought! Then I'm going to catch up on a few of those honey-do projects I've leaped over the past few months.
Well, at yeast one anyway. After all, its supposed to take four years to get totally caught up...
A Leap Of Faith?
So, what are you going to do with your extra day?
Dreams of songwriters describe many "if only" options over the airwaves. Poetic lyrics old and new, lilt their hymns for me and you. Lacking such noble talents, I tend to troll the depths of "the rough" to come up with considerably less altruistic or wistful drivel. Such as: Why does February only have 28 days and why do they call it Leap Year when it gets 29?
Well, let's see if we can figure that out. First, we need to consider who hosed February. Well, it seems we can blame good old Romulus. Before Rome was founded, a year was divided into ten months. The Romans came along and added two, renamed them all, and then modified the number of days to coincide with the initial sighting of a new full moon, or lunation. (On a side note, these machinations were viewed by many religious orders as heresy or lunarsy, from whence our terms lunacy and lunatic were spawned. Or not). Furthermore,
January was named after the Roman god Janus. March was named after the Roman god Mars. Between these two lies February, named after Februa, the festival of purification. Well, there you have it. See, the Romans really only liked to do two things: party hearty and fight. So after a month-long New Year's bacchanalia they had to sober up before they could start fighting again. Since you don't want to incur the wrath of a god, you give their months 31 days. Since you can only stand so much purification between your annual boozefest and getting back to work slaying people, you make that month as short as possible and just give it the minimum 28. Sound wisdom, indeed! Now that we have that solved, let's deal with the Leap Year thing which I claim to be a misnomer.
First, we need to consider who did the first leaping. Well, it seems we can blame some good old monks. Back in the day, monks liked to do two things: brew mead,(a distilled brew of honey, water, and yeast), and contemplate stuff. Historians generally agree the contemplating of stuff was preceded by the quaffing of copious quantitites of quality distillage. This tradition lasted for hundreds of years and came to be known as the "Mead Dulled Ages". Anyway, sometime during the mid 1500's a bunch of monks ran out of mead and leaped to the conclusion that the Julian calendar was about ten days off when their bees fell ten days behind in their honey quota. A few years later, Pope Gregory The Something decided he would keep his monks happy by ordering a hundred casks of mead and a new calendar. The same one we use today.
Since that time, in order to avoid running out of mead, we go three years in a row with about a quarter of a day missing from the calendar because the boxes the days are put in don't have lines inside of them. And then along comes the fourth year when we now have a whole day missing. So to get all caught up we have to add a day. We place it in February's month because we feel sorry for it since it gets ripped off in the other years.
Therefore, in light of all these fore facts, shouldn't the other three years be called leap years since we "leaped" right over those six hours and went right into the next year? And what we currently call a leap year should be called a Catch Up or Make Up year. Or we could honor the good old monks and call it a Mead Year and make it a national holiday while we're at it! I don't think we can have too many holidays.
Whew! Now that I'm finished dribbleing the drivel, here's my plan for my extra day:
First, because I actually tried some homemade rather than monkmade mead once and swore I'd never again allow the foul swill to pass my palate, I shall add a splop of honey to my morning cup of tea before I ... Second, call my buddy, Pete and let him know that since his birthday was a couple weeks ago and mine is still a couple months off, he will be a year older than me one day longer than usual. I'm liking that thought! Then I'm going to catch up on a few of those honey-do projects I've leaped over the past few months.
Well, at yeast one anyway. After all, its supposed to take four years to get totally caught up...