A Lighter Vein

A Free Extra 24 Hours!

Happy Leap Day everybody! What are you going to do with these magical extra 24 hours this year? We have some ideas for you, but first here is a quick history lesson about Leap day.

Leap Year has actually been around for 2,000 years, since Julius Caesar created the 365-day calendar, although Caesar’s astronomer, Sosigenes, gets credit for adding an extra day in February every four years. The reason we need a leap day is because usually, our year is 365 days long. Except that it’s not: A full cycle of seasons is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds long, or about 365.25 days. Over time, the extra quarter of a day adds up, and without Leap Day, the calendar would be one day out of sync with the seasons. After 30 years, it would be about a week off, and after 100 years, it would be nearly a month off. That would cause a lot of mass confusion! This system just makes sure our seasons start when they are supposed to.

Now for some great ideas on celebrating the elusive February 29th.

• Fans of Disney parks will be lining up to take advantage of “One more Disney Day” at Disneyland in California and at Magic Kingdom in Florida, which will be open for 24 hours, from February 29 at 6 a.m. until 6 a.m. March 1. The rides will run all night long!

• Born on February 29th and love to ski? Well show your Leap Year birthday date and get a free stay at Mammoth ski resorts.

Won’t be able to make it to either of these? Here’s a list of things you can do at home.

• Play leap frog.
• Read “Leap Year” by Barbara Sutton-Smith.
• Make pickled frogs (Don’t worry: they’re pickles in frog shapes!).
• Have your children write letters to themselves that they can open on the next Leap Day (2016). Or even do it yourself!
• Celebrate a Leap Baby: Do you know anyone who was born on February 29th? Host a once-every-four-years Leap Baby party for them.  
• Send a friend a Leap Year ecard.
• Set life achievement goals for the next 5 Leap Years.
•  Read “The Leap Year Turtle” by Robert Paske.
• Make a frog puppet.
• Women: honor a Leap Day tradition by proposing to your man.
• Eat some froggy cupcakes.
• Play Flippin Frogs.
• Make a frog origami.
• Tackle those annoying household projects that you only want to face every four years. Clean the attic, anyone?
• Using pictures from old magazine, make a “leaping” collage of all the things that jump: jumping beans, kangaroos, rabbits, pogo sticks, etc.
• Play “Ribbit, Ribbit, Jump,” instead of “Duck, Duck, Goose.”
• Watch “Leap Year.” Need a better reason to watch an Amy Adams movie?
• Learn some Leap Year Trivia.
• Catch up on a task (taxes?) that’s been bogging you down this month.
Or make up your own fun list! After all, the sky is the limit when you have a free extra day! Just remember to make sure your legs keep up and put on your compression garments today!
See you in March!

Post on February 29th, 2012

  • Comments
  • Return home
  • Next post