ORLANDO, Fla.- – It happens every four years. Last year Christmas was Wednesday, this year it’s Friday. February 29, leap day, comes once every four years, but why?
I’m glad you asked, but something seeming so simple has a lot of math and science involved. Here we go.
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There are 365 days in a year, right? Kind of. It’s actually closer to 365.25.
Things would get a little messed up if not for Leap Day.
To make up for this extra time, every four years we have an extra day.
This is where things get really weird. Sometimes we skip observing a leap year when it’s that fourth year.
It may seem crazy to have leap years and days, but you can see with the calculations below, it all makes sense. It would take more than 3,000 years to be off one calendar day.
If we didn’t have leap years and skipped them when necessary, the calendar would be off 24 days in just 100 years. There is a method to the madness.