Children born on February 29th
2022 is a leap year. A circumstance cloaked in superstition: the famous saying "leap year, fatal year" risks weighing on the shoulders of children born on February 29? Being born on February 29 means celebrating the birthday once every four years, even if in the end the parents decide to move the celebration to the following day, March 1, or the previous one, to February 28.
Born on February 29th
One wonders: how do children live this circumstance?
Someone can be disturbed and uncomfortable at the thought of being born on the day of the leap year, what Anglo-Saxon countries call "leap day”(Year of the jump) and which is always surrounded by an aura of misfortune and magic. Someone else may have some problems when he has to fill in forms whose data will then be entered into computers that do not recognize the date of birth, but in the world there are also many bisests happy to have such a unique peculiarity.
In many countries there are real leap clubs like the Spanish one founded by Jose Manuel Ubarrechena who also wrote a song dedicated to those born on February 29 and is proud of his condition: “I would like to be a leap all my life because when I turn XNUMX I will still be a child.” The Spanish club has more than two thousand members.
Similar clubs also exist in the United States, where even in the city of Anthony, Texas, a Leap is held every 4 years Festival that calls for thousands of leapers.
Read also: How to celebrate children's birthdaySomeone, of course, may instead feel disoriented and unable to bear the weight of this excessive originality. The Brazilian poet Pedro Nava drew inspiration from this existential anguish to write his Poema bissexto and to tell the expectation of a non-birthday.
The birthday for those born on February 29th
There are no precise numbers that tell us how many babies were born on February 29, but statistically the probability of being born on that day is the same as any other day. It is estimated that the chance to be born on February 29 is one in 1,461, Peter Brower, born on February 29, explains to the Daily Mail, who also explains that around 5 million people worldwide celebrate their birthday every 4 years.
And if you believe that many women who have to plan the birth of their baby avoid this wrong date by far. In fact, in many American hospitals, precisely on February 29 there is a surge of scheduled caesareans precisely because mothers prefer to give birth to their baby on a very special day.
The origins of the leap year
A calendar year is not 365 days long, as the calendar says, but 365.242 days. To compensate for this inaccuracy, an extra day is added to calendars every four years. It was the first to introduce the leap year Julius Caesar, but then the thing was made official by Pope Gregory XIII, which took even 10 days out of the year 1582 so that from 5 October it suddenly jumped to 15 October.
