Happy Leap Year Day

Last updated on: February 29, 2008 at 7:53 am

February 29, 2008 by Gene Veith

So what are you going to do with the extra day that you have been given this year?

I believe that February 29, which we only get once every four years, should be a holiday. And I’m not just talking about Little Orphan Annie’s birthday (which was how her creator explained how she was still a kid after decades in the funny papers). It should be a day on which we contemplate time as God’s gift, a truly extra, gratuitous day. It would be like a national snow day, in which people don’t have to go to work. (After all, if you have an annual salary, you are not being paid for today. Think about it.) But it shouldn’t be a time of going out for some big vacation, either (and the government should NOT tamper with the calendar by trying to move February 29 to Monday). Just stay at home and do nothing in particular.

Any other ideas for what we could do with this holiday? What we should call it or how we should celebrate it?

There is an old custom of women getting to propose to men during Leap Year. Women could do that or take other initiatives. I could see making it a holiday in honor of women, though we wouldn’t want the feminists to take it over. But how else should February 29, a day that only comes around once every four years, be celebrated?

February 28, 2008

Mark Steyn, satirist

February 29, 2008 The return of Darius the Great