By Aireana August Turner, Features Editor | February 21st, 2024
2024 is another leap year at Carson High School! Leap years have been known as a common practice to add an extra day at the end of February for centuries. But why do we have them? Why are they important?
According to The Hill, “with nearly six hours of extra time occurring each year, it threatens to cause a drift in calendar seasons. So to prevent this date drift, the additional time is lumped into a neat 24 hour period and an additional day is added to the calendar every four years.”
You wouldn’t expect that the world would need this extra time to catch up to our calendar but it’s been done to do just that. Especially since the date, “the 29th of February” can be a day where it’s quite possible or unlikely to be born because of this system.
“Leap years are pretty cool since it only happens once every four years”, said CHS senior Lana Arevalo. “However, I didn't really consider why we have it nor its importance. I find it funny with the birthdays on leap year as they would jokingly celebrate their "real" birthday when that leap year comes, but also saddening since they're birthdate only shows rarely.”
According to NBCChicago, “it takes Earth approximately 365.242189 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds, to circle once around the Sun.” We can evaluate that leap years are stressed upon to keep up with the Earth’s orbit around the sun.
“I believe Leap Years are important for the most part”, said CHS junior Chelcie Lopez. “Having Earth play catch up is kinda odd to me, as I believed that was just how the world worked naturally with our calendar system today.”
Another question arises, should we continue this? Although it seems typically odd that we have a randomly added day in February, it’s safe to say we should continue this, knowing that if we stop, our calendar would slowly drift out of sync with the Earth’s orbit, resulting in seasonal discrepancy.
“Yes, I do believe we should continue this practice”, said CHS senior Valerie Desamito. “It’s a universal tradition that shouldn’t be changed, and it’s a unique way of looking forward to another four more years.”
Despite the commonality that having an extra day in the calendar every 4 years is something that we don’t necessarily think about or have had concerns about, it’s still a matter of knowing why this phenomenon happens and understanding how important it is to society today.