Today is a special day. It comes just once every four years. Feb. 29 is Leap Day — and long awaited birthdays for several Charlottesville residents
At the end of January, we asked our email newsletter subscribers who gets to celebrate their actual birthdays today. And four people told us their stories.
But first, here’s why these special birthdays happen: In a Leap Year, an extra day is added to the end of February to account for our calendar’s inaccuracy. The calendar is designed to track the time it takes for the earth to travel around the sun. It’s about 365 days — but not quite. The precise amount of time it takes the earth to make the journey is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds. (Read more in this article from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.)
This inaccuracy would over time cause our calendar to drift away from the earth’s natural seasons. Spring would come just a bit later every year, and over the decades and centuries it would add up.
We prevent this by adding an additional 24 hours to the calendar every four years.
If you’re any good at math, you probably noticed that that doesn’t quite add up there, either. We don’t lose a full 24 hours every four years. Every Leap Day actually adds about 44 minutes to the calendar. That’s not as severe as losing nearly 24 hours, but it still causes seasons to shift. So, our calendar actually accounts for this, too. Once every century or two — we skip a Leap Year. The math is a little complicated. According to the Smithsonian, it’s “if the year is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400, Leap Year is skipped.” Our last skipped Leap Year was 1900. Our next will be 2100.
Humanity has maintained a calendar this way for a long time — 2068 years to be precise. The model was implemented by Julius Caesar. It began on Jan. 1, 45 BCE. (Read more about that in from the History Channel.)
That means, of course, that over the last two millennia, an untold number of people have had the fortune (or misfortune?) of being born on this day. Instead of an annual birthday, they get a real birthday quadrennially.
Sound disappointing?
These Charlottesville residents who were born on Feb. 29 have managed to turn this infrequent birthday into something special.
Jane is 8 years old and celebrating her second birthday
Meet Jane. This Charlottesville second-grader was born on Feb. 29, 2016, so this is only her second birthday.
She’s quite excited.
“This one feels more special,” she said.
Jane’s parents work hard to make the non-Leap Years feel special. (Her parents asked that the family’s last name be withheld to protect her privacy.) Since her birthday falls on a missing day between Feb. 28 and March 1, they decided she would celebrate it on both those days. On years without a 29th, Jane’s birthday celebrations begin on noon Feb. 28 and continue until noon March 1.
Still, there are some drawbacks to having a Leap Day birthday, and Jane is already encountering them. For one, she’s never had her birthday marked on her school calendar. Since kindergarten, her teachers have always put her classmates’ birthdays on the calendar to celebrate them. But Feb. 29 wasn’t on any calendar — until now.
This morning, Jane heard her real birthday in her school’s morning announcements for the first time.
She picked out her party this year. It will be pet adoption themed, because she loves animals.
Happy birthday, Jane!
Lexie Spillers, 12, finally gets to celebrate at school
If Jane is excited, Lexie Spillers is over the moon. This Charlottesville 12-year-old is about to celebrate her third real birthday.
“Me and my bestie were jumping up and down this morning, screaming,” Lexie said. “I’m so excited.”
Though the family celebrates every year, Lexie has always felt like she was missing out. Her friends get excited every year for their birthdays, she said. The dates appear on calendars and the kids get singled out at school. But Lexie rarely gets her special day.
“I was just jealous of everybody because everybody was like, ‘Oh, my birthday, my birthday is so special.’ And I would be like, you have a birthday every year, I have a birthday every four years.”
To compensate, Lexie’s mother celebrates her daughter’s real birthdays — big. The last Leap Year fell on a Saturday. Lexie’s family hosted a party with her friends at the downtown crafting lounge The Hive, and celebrated their 8-year-old all day long.
“We did lots, it was really big and fun,” Anne Spillers said. “She cried that night because she wouldn’t have a birthday for four years.”
But those four years have passed, and today Lexie is having another real birthday.
Her mother offered to let her stay home from school. She declined.
“I want to get to celebrate it at school with my friends,” she said, her voice so excited it came out in a squeal.
After school, her friends will gather at her home for a big sleepover.
Happy birthday, Lexie!
Jackie Morris celebrates for a month when it’s not a Leap Year
Jackie Morris was born Feb. 29, 1996. She remembers as a young child having to explain to her friends that her birthday came just once every four years. But it wasn’t something she was particularly troubled by. The family celebrated her on Feb. 28 — though they made bigger deals whenever the 29th came around.
The first time she remembers truly understanding that her birthday was bizarre was in 2011. She stood in her local DMV hoping to receive a learner’s permit.
“There was a moment, a legit 30 seconds, where I was confused on how they were going to judge me,” Morris said. She’d had only three real birthdays at that point. “I was like, I’m obviously not three. But will they count it that way?”
She received her permit, no problem.
Once she became an adult and her parents stopped organizing parties, Morris began to feel a little disappointed on non-Leap Years. She and her friends would throw big parties on Feb. 29s. But other years seemed quite flat by comparison.
She didn’t let it stay that way for long.
“It kind of stinks,” she said. “But, here’s the thing: on the years a don’t have a birthday, I just take the whole month and celebrate myself.”
She’s taken multiple trips and held lavish parties.
“It’s like, I don’t have a birthday this year, I deserve this!” she said.
She’s gotten so good at celebrating non-Leap Years that she’s almost disappointed to not have the excuse this year, she said. Still, she’ll have a birthday dinner tonight that brings together her friends and family to celebrate this rare occasion.
Happy birthday, Jackie!
Dian Sierra turns 60 — or 15
Dian Sierra has been celebrated for her Leap Year birthday since the day she was born. Literally.
The Pennsylvania hospital where she was born on Feb. 29, 1964 was holding a contest that year. The first Leap Year baby to arrive would receive a pile of gifts and baby supplies. Sierra tied for the first with another baby boy. They were both born at precisely 1:33 a.m.
The boy’s family got the supplies. The doctors, nurses and hospital staff all chipped in and bought Sierra a $100 savings bond.
She cashed that bond in 12 years later — on her third birthday — to buy her first bicycle.
Sierra doesn’t remember too much about her childhood parties. Whether they were Leap Years or not, her parents did a good job of making her feel special, she said.
But the year she turned 16 — her fourth real birthday — her mother did something that inadvertently started a new tradition.
“My mom bought me a card that said, ‘Now you’re 4!'”
From then on, every Leap Year, Sierra had two parties. Every year, on Feb. 28, she celebrated for her actual age. But, on those special Feb. 29s, she held a second party celebrating her age in Leap Years.
“I’ll be 15 on Thursday,” Sierra said, with a laugh. “Or 60 depending on how you look at it.”
Sierra was diagnosed with breast cancer in November, and is preparing to undergo radiation. So she might not be able to celebrate her rare birthday as much as she normally would. But, she’s still going to make it special.
She and her wife, Kathleen, will start the morning with a special breakfast, followed by a trip to the movie theater and then another special dinner out.
“Kathleen has declared this is my Dragon Birthday since Leap Year is coinciding with the Chinese Year of the Dragon,” she said. “Most of my gifts will be on this theme, she tells me. Of course, I’m ecstatic since dragons are really my thing.”
Happy birthday, Dian!
