BLOG: About February
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Since I launched this blog, I have regularly written about months. For example, I have often written about April, being my birth month (and my daughter’s birth month, same day) and the birth month of multiple family members and close friends.
I also wrote frequently about July being the month that marks the start of the fiscal year for postgraduate medical education, residency and fellowship training.
And I wrote almost every year about March and November being the months when Daylight Saving Time changes occur.
And I wrote about February, one time, in 2020: Leap to February 30. Read that leap year post to see what I meant by “February 30.”
So, 2024 is another leap year. February will last 29 days, not 28. I will come back to this point later.
February is a special month in many ways. In February, there is a special day to celebrate love, Feb. 14 Valentines Day.
There are multiple health and social awareness occasions that occur in February, including the National Cancer Prevention Month, American Heart Month and National Wear Red Day to support women's heart health on Feb. 2.
And, of course, there is the Super Bowl in February. For Detroiters and Michiganders, this Super Bowl sensation was well and alive for the Lions to make their first appearance until the team was eliminated (by a small margin) by the 49ers in the NFC Championship game.
But on a sad note, Feb. 13, 2023, was a very sad day for MSU, when a tragic mass shooting occurred on MSU campus.
Personally, February is the birth month for some family members and close friends.
Back to this year’s leap year.
The leap year occurs every 4 years, when February lasts 29 days. This way, the solar year remains exact, because the earth rotates around the sun in exactly 365.25 days, not 365 days as we may tend to think. For starters, we cannot have a 365.25-day-long year in the calendar. Clearly, it is not possible.
Of course, where the 365.25 figure came from is like “rocket science” for me — literally! But let’s save this mind-boggling discussion about aviation, space and the galaxy for another day.
Leap year was developed so that every 4 years the solar year will gain 1 day. The earth will also restart its annual rotation around the sun in a perfect manner. The seasons will remain the same, for example, spring will start at the same time each year on March 21.
Imagine what would have happened if we did not have a leap year.
I will use simple math and thus avoid the sophisticated calculations going back hundreds or thousands of years figuring out the Gregorian calendar. Just go back to the turn of the 20th century, the year 1900.
From 1990 to this year, 2024, there have been (roughly) 31 leap years and 4 generations (if you do math). And let us take Michigan, my home state. With the leap year, Michganders of the early 1900s had their January just like we do in the early 2000s. And so, we will have our spring exactly on March 21 just like the spring in the early 1900s.
Now without the leap year, if I have done the math right, we would have a warmer January this year in Michigan, because the original January would have been completed in December. But then our real spring would have started on Feb. 21.
It would be nice to have a warmer January, but then it would feel odd to feel the early breezes of spring while we would be still in February.
I am not sure if this simplified math has made the point for the benefits of the leap year. I am not sure if these benefits are just psychological (a placebo) or if there may be other realistic benefits — or maybe this whole issue is not worth the discussion.
Or maybe it is just me!
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