Most years, Fritz Emmanuel Abélard gets his birthday phone calls and text messages sometime between midnight on Feb. 28 and 12:01 a.m. on March 1.

This year will not be much different except, in addition to a few split seconds, he'll get 24 hours to celebrate his leap year birthday. For Abélard, celebrating a birthday can be just as complicated as figuring out exactly what and when leap year is.

"I was born on Feb. 29 at about 11:55 p.m.," said Abélard, a senior from Haiti studying French studies and communications. "Technically, I have my birthday every four years. I'm turning 24, so I guess that makes me 6."

Abélard said he likes being a leap day baby because every four years, people get confused and try to celebrate his birthday twice. When it's not a leap year, he celebrates on March 1.

Leap year is a one-day correction applied to the 365-day Gregorian calendar in order to line it up with the astronomical calendar, which is slightly longer.

According to calendopedia.com, the wobbling motion of the earth as it rotates around the sun creates slight differences year to year in the actual length of the astronomical calendar, but on average there are 365.2422 days in one year.

Pope Gregory XIII adopted the calendar that bears his name in 1582, dropping 10 days from the month of October to correct errors in the older Julian calendar. After the correction, the calendar start date was set at 1 Jan. 1 A.D. Most catholic countries adopted the calendar soon after, but many countries have only started using it in the last few centuries.

Great Britain and the American colonies adopted the calendar in 1752, 20 years after George Washington's birth. Because 11 days disappeared from the calendar that year, Americans celebrate Washington's birthday on Feb. 22 instead of Feb. 11, which is what some historical documents show is his real birthday.

While most countries around the world use the Gregorian calendar in official matters, many cultures use different calendars to designate important feast days and other holidays. Many of these calendars apply similar corrections for the lost hours or days each year.

For example, the Chinese calendar usually has 12 months or about 354 days, but on leap years there are 13 months or about 384 days. The staff of the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China, determines when a leap year will be.

The Chinese calendar is based on a complicated 60-year cycle based on the motions of the sun and the moon. This includes five cycles of the popular Chinese zodiac, which uses animals to represent years. The year of the rat began on Feb. 7 which was the Chinese New Year this year.



Copyright Brigham Young University 28 Feb 2008