This once in a quadrennium observation ought to be of some small consolation to those who are doomed to an official birthday celebration only once every four years.

Invented more than 2,000 years ago, we cannot, however, deem the whole idea as a bust.

In the first place, without that extra day, the year would gradually crawl around the seasons until we would be celebrating Independence Day in Winter, and Christmas in July.

Leap Year — the name given to a year consisting of 366 days — is the result of our inability to devise a perfect calendar. Every fourth year we simply add an extra day to make up the hours that cannot be accommodated in a 365-day year.

The calendar is an artificial device set up by humans to expedite record keeping. We obviously can't push the Sun around when our artificial calendar gets out of whack, so we change the calendar to make it coincide with the Sun.

To be effective, a manmade calendar must correspond and keep in step with the seasons of the natural year — the time it takes for the Earth to revolve once around the Sun.

The problem arises since the calendar year is 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds short of the solar year. Every four years this accumulates to nearly 24 hours.This period of time is then worked into the calendar by the addition of a leap year, or a year with an extra added day to take up that additional 24 hours.

If we did not stabilize this slight drifting of the calendar — in the course of a few centuries, we would be marking the celebration of Easter in Winter, Christmas in Autumn, and Labor Day in the Spring.

The monumental problem of keeping the calendar on track with the seasons, dates back to the dawn of recorded history.

The Egyptians had perfected an excellent method of time reckoning based on the Sun, rather than the erratic cycles of the Moom. By Roman times, however, the calendar was found in a bewildering state. The Roman calendar had fallen into political abuse. No one could tell in advance how long the year was likely to be, since days were infrequently removed or added to lenghten or shorten the calendar and thus the service terms of certain political officials.

Rome had been following a calendar that first had 10 months of 304 days. This, of course, did not work well at all. A 12 month calendar of 355 days followed. This required the addition of a 13th month of varying lengths added every other year.

By Julius Caesar's time, the calendar was in a total state of confusion and getting worse all the time.

Caesar's alarm over the status of the Roman calendar resulted in his initiation of a sweeping reform which went into effect in 45 B.C.

On the advice of his astronomers, Caesar first devised a plan whereby the months of theyear would be brought back in proper step with the seasons. Among other adjustments, it was necessary to lengthen the year of 46 B.C. to a total of 445 days. In this manner, spring of the year 45 B.C. would come at the proper season — in March.

So drastic was this measure, that the year 46 B.C. is often referred to as the year of confusion.

The Julian reform also introduced the concept of the “leap year” into the calendar.

Caesar's astronomer determined that the Earth does not spin on its axis in an exact number ot times during one revolution about the Sun. He calculated the true length of the year tobe 365 and one quarter days, or 365 days and 6 hours. The extra quarter of a day, or six hours, could not be included in the year until it amounted to a whole day. Therefore, Caesar decreeed that the Roman year would consist of 365 days in a normal year — but that every fourth year would contain 366 days.

Caesar's reform marked a noble achievement in the history of our calendar — but it was still not a perfect system of time-reckoning.

Since it takes the Earth 365 days, 5 hours, and 48 minutes to orbit once around the SUN — and not an even 365 and one quarter — the average year in the Julian calendar was 11 minutes and 14 seconds — or .0078 days too long.

This slight annual error is not detectable in the course of a few years. But it adds up to one whole day in every 128 years — a calendar “drift” of three days every 385 years.

By the 15th Century, the Julian calaendar was in error by 11 days. The vernal equinox — the first day of spring — was then falling on March 11 instead of March 25 as it did in the days of Caesar.

In an effort to bring the calendar year in accordance with the seasons once again, Pope Gregory the XIII decreed that the day after Octover 4, 1582, would be followed by October 15. The dropping of 10 days from the calendar made the Vernal Equinox fall on March 21.

In order to prevent further errors, Pope Gregory also decreed that centesimal years (1800, 1900, 2000,etc.) would be leap years, only if they could be exactly divided by 400.

In this revised leap year plan, the year 2000 will contain 366 days ⮏ but the century years 2100, 2200, and 2300 will have only 365 days. The elimination of three leap years every 400 years leaves the calendar a mere 26 seconds out of step with the natural seasons — or one whole day every 3,323 years.