A Novel Idea: After The Draft

Douglas
Owen

Guess what?
Don’t you hate it when someone says that?
But seriously…guess what this year is?
It’s a Leap Year! Every four years we gain a day...2016, 2020, 2024, and so on. It’s a whole day to balance out our calendar.

So...we get to have an extra day off, right? We won’t have to work or do anything—we can just take that special day and goof off. Isn’t that how it works?
Unfortunately, “Leap Year Day” is treated just like another day. Even though it’s a whole extra twenty-four hours, we still have to continue our daily routines. It’s as if our planet needs a day to catch-up, just like we all do from all the daily stresses and chaos in our lives, especially at this time of year, after all those crazy football weekends with the chips and salsa eating contests.
Of course, you can have special days and do special things on Leap Year Day. There’s no law against it. As a matter of fact, there’s quite a history behind some of the ideas linked to this extra day in February.
If you get married on February 29th, you can say you’ve been married for 4 years when actually it is 16. Sometimes being married 4 years feels like 16, but that’s a different story. You can justify only buying anniversary presents every 4 years, if you want to risk it, but you sure won’t forget the date.
The same rules apply to those lucky (or unlucky) enough to have been born on Leap Year Day, although I wouldn’t recommend trying to say you’re six to get kid’s admission prices to the theme parks when you’re actually 24. It doesn’t really look or feel right.
There are more than a few romantic traditions associated with Leap Year Day, of course, because romantic traditions are always looking for new ways to sneak into everyone’s lives. Many centuries ago, there were some unique benefits during Leap Year Day—for women.
In Western culture, February 29th allowed the rules of courtship to be reversed. Nothing as drastic as the men doing the laundry, dishes, mopping the floors, cleaning the cat litter, and other daily chores, let’s not go that far. Women certainly didn’t get to stick their feet up on a convenient sheep and drink beer all afternoon. However, in Ireland during the 5th century, St. Bridget reportedly implored St. Patrick to grant women the opportunity to propose to men on this particular day. A drastic change indeed.

Read the entire article in the February 2020 issue of InD'Tale magazine.

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