If Your Born On?

Question

if your born on Feb.29th a leapyear does that mean you celebrate your bday every four years? or every year on the 28th? and if you celebrate it on the 29th does that mean your four years younger?

Answer 1

To figure the right day to celebrate your birthday, you add 365 and one-quarter days to the hour of your birth. Suppose you were born February 29, 1972 at 10 PM. Then 365 and one-quarter days went by and behold, the first anniversary of your birth hour came on March 1, 1973, at about 4 AM.

The second and third anniversaries also fell on March 1, at 10 AM and 4 PM respectively. Comes year four (1976), and your anniversary is back where it started, February 29 at 10 PM.

Things would have worked out differently if you'd been born at 4 AM on leap day. Your first, second, and third birth-hour anniversaries would have occurred on February 28 at 10 AM, 4 PM, and 10 PM, respectively. If you'd been born at 4 PM, your first anniversary would fall on February 28 but your second and third on March 1. What happens for leap-day babies born at other hours is left as an exercise for the student.

The real problem isn't leap-day people, it's those smug non-leap-day babies who think all they've got to do to be in synch with the cosmos is celebrate their birthdays on the same date every year. Not a chance, Lance.

If you were born February 28, 1972, at 4 AM, you were supposed to celebrate all your non-leap-year birthdays on February 27. Did you? Of course not. Before you were out of diapers you were shaking down the 'rents for gifts under false pretenses. Considering how today's youth start out, it's no wonder so many come to no good.

But look on the bright side. The year 2000, thank Jah, will be a normal leap year. Years divisible by 100 usually aren't. (The rule is: year divisible by 100, no leap year unless also divisible by 400, in which case leap year. It's to keep the calendar lined up with the solar system. Trust Uncle Cecil.)

Were we to skip a leap year in 2000, the awful consequence would be that everybody in the world would celebrate his or her birthday on the wrong day. (At least in some years. If you must get technical, on average we'd be 66 percent more wrong than previously.) Talk about dodging a bullet.

In leap-day-less 1900 they weren't so lucky. Take my late grandmother, born in 1887. Commencing in 1900 she began celebrating her birthday a day before it actually occurred. For the next 81 years, in short, she was living a lie. She was a dour woman; now I know why:

Answer 2

Most people celebrate on March 1. With the exception of leap year.