A leap of faith

Ladies, gather your red petticoats and Poundland rings–the day on which you’re ‘allowed’ to propose marriage is on the horizon, says Victoria Marston

- Victoria Marston

AT school, I knew a girl who was born on February 29. At the time, she was greatly pitied for not really having a birthday every three out of four years. Ultimately, I’d say, she’ll have the last laugh when she is able to claim—with a decent pinch of salt—to be celebrating her 20th birthday as we all turn 80.

As we all know, leap years, in which we bump up our standard 365-day Gregorian calendar to 366 with the addition of February 29, arrive once every four years. This is to accommodate the fact that the Earth actually takes 365.2422 days to orbit the Sun. If we didn’t, at some point in the future (about 750 years, to be precise), we would find ourselves enjoying winter in June.

The arrival of a leap year is marked in various ways around the world, not only by those celebrating their rare, yet true birthdays—‘leaplings’, if you will. In Ireland, Leap Day is also known as Bachelor’s Day, thanks to the tradition whereby women are ‘allowed’ (perhaps ‘encouraged’ might be more appropriate these days) to propose to the man in their life. This supposedly stems from a complaint made by nun St Brigid of Kildare , in the 5th century, that women were having to wait too long for their prospective husbands to get down on one knee.