I have a riddle for you: what’s something that only happens every four years and adds a whole extra day to your life?
No, not 20 combined Republican presidential debates.
I get that the earth doesn’t take exactly 365 days to completely orbit the sun. I get that it actually takes something like 365.242934808 days. So if we add an extra day into our calendar every four years (.25 days), doesn’t that mean we’re gonna be severely overshooting the mark at some point? There’s just no way to be exactly right with what “day” or what “time” it is, whatever that even means.
God must laugh at our silly attempts to keep up with time: Oh look, my image-bearers are at it again, throwing in extra days to keep up with themselves. Has it been four years already? Seems like just tomorrow it was 1500 BC.
You know what would be jazzier than sprinkling in a February 29th every four years? If we added this extra 366th day to a different month.
Why February? Whoever decided to tack on our precious extra day to this lame heart-filled, president-honoring month? Wouldn’t adding an extra day to the December holiday season make much more sense?
A 32nd day of October would be cool too. Halloween would still occur on the 31st, but then a super special Halloween sequel would kick into gear the next night. I call it, Halloween 2. Like the movie, except not. Kids would once again go door-to-door, but instead of a night of candy, it would be a night of the truly ridiculous, from peach pits to toothpicks and individual dryer sheets. Most random item in your bag gets saved and handed back out on the next Halloween 2.
Or what if this pesky 366th day just changed from month to month to keep things fresh? It’s in February this year, so we could add it to March in 2016, then April in 2020, etc. You think it’s quirky to be born on February 29, waiting four years for your next official birthday? Just think of all those people born on November 31 who have to wait 48 years for the next November 31.
Or can’t we just commit one day a year, every single year, that only lasts .242th of a normal, full-length day? I’d totally be down for a bonus mini-day consisting of 6 extra hours of sleep, or 6 extra hours of half-marathon prep, or however you’d like to fill your mini-day. Eating only mini-wheats? Done. Endless rounds of mini-golf? Count me in. Riding miniature horses? Ride on, cowboy. I mean, mini-horseboy.
I mean, God’s already laughing at us. Why not really give Him a show?
Well adding 6 hours to a day would offset the moon cycles and the earth’s rotation. We’d really be screwed by the fourth year!
Also, we are kept from over shooting by not having it exactly every four years. I forget the rule, but we skip a leap year every hundred years or something.
Truly, we don’t need to give God any more reasons to laugh at us. I think we do well enough already.