Groundhogs and Valentines

Is it just me, or do any of y’all ever have random thoughts pop into your head for no apparent reason and you just have to follow that train track?

Okay, yeah. Maybe it is just me.

This morning it struck me that this is the last day of the shortest month of the year. Oddly … or maybe not so oddly, that random thought then compelled me to find out why February has only 28 days – and 29 in leap years – while the other months have 30 or 31.

I mean, seriously, couldn’t one of the other months have given up a day and shared? That’s pretty damn selfish of them! Did seven of them really need 31 days while only four of them get 30? And did February really have to get totally ripped off? Like how fair is that?

A much better plan would have been to let the six odd numbered months have 31 days, the six even numbered months have 30 days, which adds up to 366. Since we need only 365 days, one of the months that have 31 days could be a mensch and voluntarily give up a day. Doesn’t that work out a whole lot better than screwing one month out of not one, but two days? Works for me just fine.

But since I wasn’t around in ancient Rome when calendars were being re-branded, I didn’t get a vote.

The Original Roman Calendar, devised by Rome’s first king Romulus, had ten months that began with March and ended with December. No one cared what happened between December and March because everyone pretty much stayed indoors when there was nothing to do in the fields. Back then the calendar was only useful for trying to figure out when to plant and when to harvest. Exciting times, eh?

The next king, Numa Pompilius, decided that it was high time to account for the days that no one cared about so he added two months, January and February. The twelve months of the New and Improved Roman Calendar each had 28 days based on the lunar cycle.

Legend has it that odd numbers were cool, but even numbers were bad luck. So to fix that, Numa gave seven of the twelve months 29 days and made four of them 31 days long. He also decided that if there was to be one unlucky, even numbered month, it might as well be a 28-day February since that month was in the middle of winter and there was nothing to do anyway.

Except wait for a groundhog to show up.

And, of course, for Cupid to make an appearance.

Other than that, February was pretty much useless.

The Newer and Even More Improved Roman Calendar now had 355 days, which was approximately 12 lunar cycles. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite sync with the earth’s trip around the sun. Since a 355-day year would have messed up the Romans’ planting and harvesting schedule, Numa tinkered with the calendar by adding an extra 27-day month after February. This extra “intercalary” month was supposed to be added every couple of years to even things out.

That didn’t always work out so well because word has it that the folks in charge of timekeeping, the Roman priests, sometimes conveniently forgot to insert that extra month into the calendar. An article I came across when researching this important subject claimed that “some officials took advantage of the system to extend their time in office.”

Here we are, more than two millenniums later, and some things haven’t changed.

In 45 B.C., along came Julius Caesar, who tinkered some more with the Roman calendar by adding ten more days to the year so it would be more in line with the solar calendar that the obviously more enlightened Egyptians had already invented.

He then commissioned the Bangles to write a song about it.

Caesar randomly added a day here and there to each month, except February, in order to even out the calendar.

As an afterthought, he threw a bone to the month that no one liked anyway by adding a leap day every four years.

Hence, the Bigger, Better and Massively Improved Roman Calendar.

Does anyone else here wonder why the Romans are no longer around?

Just saying.

Our U.S. Presidential elections also fall on leap years, but I have no idea if that was intentional or not. I’d like to think it was some kind of practical joke punk’d on us by our founding fathers and not just an utter coincidence.