MOVIN' WITH MORALES!: Leaping to Serve You... from MORALES!

A leap year is any year whose date is exactly divisible by 4
except those which are divisible by 100 but not 400.

Why such complexity? Because the exact number of days in a solar year is actually ever-so-slightly less than 365.25 (it is 365.242374, to be precise), so the algorithm had to be designed such that every now and then a leap year is skipped to keep the calendar.

Only one in every four centenary years is a Leap Year (the first two digits have to be divided by four). Therefore, 1800 and 1900 didn’t have a Feb. 29, but 2000 did.

Persons born on leap day, February 29, are called "leaplings" or "leapers." However fun it may be to rib them for enjoying 75 percent fewer birthdays than the rest of us over the course of their lives, they do have the special privilege, between leap years, of celebrating their nativity a full day earlier if they so choose. It was once thought that leapling babies would inevitably prove sickly and "hard to raise," though no one remembers why.

A whimsical tradition dating back at least four centuries holds that leap years confer upon women the "privilege" of proposing marriage to men instead of the other way around. The convention was that any man who refused such a proposal owed his spurned suitor a silk gown and a kiss — provided she was wearing a red petticoat at the moment she popped the question.

Another tall tale — dates the origin of ladies' privilege to the 5th century, around the time St. Patrick supposedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. As the story goes, St. Patrick was approached by St. Bridget, who had come to protest on behalf of all women the unfairness of always have to wait for men to propose marriage. After due consideration, St. Patrick offered St. Bridget and her gender the special privilege of being able to pop the question one year out of every seven. Some haggling ensued, and the frequency ultimately settled upon was one year out of four — leap years, specifically — an outcome which satisfied both parties. Then, unexpectedly, it being a leap year and St. Bridget being single, she got down on one knee and proposed to St. Patrick on the spot. He refused, of course, bestowing on her a kiss and a beautiful silk gown in consolation. We may conclude, among other things, that St. Patrick was better at dealing with snakes than with women.

In another European tradition, men have to pay if they said no to being wed; one legend holds that a man who rejects a proposal must buy the person 12 pairs of gloves — to hide the ringless finger.

In the Lunar calendar, a leap month is added about every three years. The Jewish calendar also adds an extra month in a leap year, which occurs seven times every 19 years. The Iranian, or Persian, calendar has about eight leap years in a 33-year cycle.

If you’re working on a fixed annual salary, you’re essentially working for free on Feb. 29. Look at this way — it’s still a day or two shorter than a regular month!