Leap year is upon us baby, and I’m cosmically loving it. I was born on a sunny day in the Virgin Islands on 29 February. A leap day in a leap year — a calendar oddity that means I can celebrate my real birthday only once every four years. So, 2024 is a special year for us leaplings, not just because we get a free ride on the London Eye for having to forgo birthdays ¾ of the time. Finally, we can celebrate on our actual birthday rather than having to choose between 28 February and 1 March.
What is a leap day you ask? It’s a rare event that happens every four years. It all started when a few Sumerians got together and divided the year into 12 months of 30 days each, which made their 360-day year. Which was fine, apart from that it was nearly a week shorter than Earth’s journey around the Sun. When the Egyptians came along and adopted this calendar, they solved the problem by adding five days of parties at the end of the year (glad we kept that one up). Then in 45 BCE, Julius Caesar added an extra day every four years, in February. Finally it was Pope Gregory XIII who first coined the phrase ‘leap year’. Many hands make light... confusion, for everyone else.
The odds of being born on 29 February are about one in 1,461, meaning there are only about five and a half million of us on Earth. It’s a pretty exclusive clique (including author and life coaching guru Tony Robbins). When it’s not a leap year, we tend to party shamelessly over a few days (do as the Egyptians did, I say).
Celebrating for a week definitely has its perks, but as a kid I was teased about not having a ‘real’ birthday. It also really messes with social media — some years I don’t show up in people’s feeds, others I receive all the ‘happy birthday’ love on the days either side of that missing 29th, with no one knowing when my birthday actually is.
But the pros? Innumerable. At school, we would get a slice of cake on our birthday — I would always get two. Now in adult life, restaurants generally give me champagne. Plus leap year babies tend to plan bigger celebrations on the day to commemorate the magical time. One year I jumped out of a plane. Another year I got to sing at my birthday party with some of my music idols. I also love that there are other non birthday-related leap-day customs. In Ireland, the 29th is known as Bachelor’s Day, notoriously when women take the reins and propose. This was thanks to St Bridget who complained to St Patrick that women had to wait too long for men to get on with it.
As my birthday approaches, like most of us I get a bit anxious. It makes me think of one of my favourite quotes from Mark Twain: ‘The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.’ But on the whole, I love how this special, quirky day is mine and mine only (well, nearly).
Rare and remarkable, we age like a fine wine but four years slower. Forever young, I’m only nine this year. How do I look on it?
Aishah Roberts is an artist & producer @dreamsinmusic www.pyramidfour.com
