“Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone:
Which hath but twenty-eight in fine,
Till leap year gives it twenty-nine.”

We can thank Julius Caesar for giving us an extra day on the calendar every four years. Back in 45 B.C. the Romans kept a 355-day calendar, in order to have festivals occur around the same season each year. This meant that every second year a 22- or 23-day month was created. To simplify the calendar, Caesar decided to add days to different months of the year, creating the 365-day Julian calendar we use today. This resulted in an extra day being added to the calendar every fourth year.

Can’t you just picture Caesar sprinkling days throughout the months on the calendar?

“An extra day—great! Let’s put it in February!”

Some people in the Northeast might ask why we need another day in February every four years—or ever. It’s a month that is often cold and gray, wet, snowy, and just plain dreary. Stuck between January and March, it only seems to get in the way of the arrival of spring.

But forget that Leap Day landed in February. Consider this: we have an extra day this year. The real question is, what are we going to do with it?