Why exactly does February have 28 days? | Did you know?

February came later than the other months

January and February are “younger” than the other months. They appeared later. How did this happen?

The calendar that is now used throughout the Western world and in Lithuania is called the Gregorian calendar.

However, it was based on the earlier Julian calendar. And the latter, created by Julius Caesar, has existed since ancient Roman times.

And it wasn’t even the first Roman calendar: Julius Caesar created his own calendar system by modifying an existing calendar. And this, in turn, was born of an even older age.

Little is known about the oldest calendar used in the early years of the Roman Empire, mostly from Roman historical sources, created several hundred years later and based on oral tradition.

But these sources say that the first calendar was 10 months. The year under him began in battle, on the spring equinox, and ended in December.

January and February just weren’t. Each month had 30 or 31 days: 4 months had 31 days, 6 months had 30 days.

You have probably noticed a little problem: according to this calendar, the year was much shorter than in reality. The year was only 304 days.

Does this mean that the Romans simply did not count time in winter? Similarity. At that time, the main function of the calendar was to help agriculture.

According to the calendar, the farmers calculated when to sow and harvest. Since there was no need to sow or harvest anything in the winter, it simply did not make sense to calculate the exact time, and this period was simply called “winter.”

So if you move in time to the day of the times that we now attribute to February, and ask the first accepted Roman, “What month is it now?”, He would simply answer “None.” And that would be fine.

The first calendar reform

However, as society developed, it wasn’t just the farmers who counted the time. Finally, the Romans decided that a system where one sixth of a year is occupied by a period where one cannot even schedule meetings on a particular day is pretty stupid.

According to ancient Roman historical sources, around AD 753 pr. Kr. King Numa Pumpilius, heir to Romulus and second of the seven legendary kings of Rome, came up with the idea of ​​adapting the calendar to the cycles of the Moon, or the rotations of the Moon around the Earth.

As you know, a lunar cycle lasts about 29 and a half days, and 12 lunar cycles last about 355 days. Thus, the year under the Numa system lasted 355 days.

10 months ago, Numa added two more, in January and February. They were added at the end of the year. So the year started in March and ended in February.

How long did it interfere with each month? It would seem that the simplest thing would have been to have seven months in 30 years and five in 31 days. But then the Romans had a superstition that even numbers were unhappy.

Numa Pompilius wanted as few months as possible to have an even number of days. Therefore, according to the calendar you created, five months had 31 days, six months had 29 days, and only one month, February, had 28 days.

It was impossible to avoid this, because if a year has 355 days and 12 months, as I count, a month will still have to have an even number of days.

It is not known exactly why February was chosen as the month that will have 28 days, but it is likely simply because it was the last month of the year.

And it is still likely that the Romans followed the logic: if a month has to be unhappy, it is better to have it in winter and the shortest.

Rise month instead of rise day

You may have noticed that the new system, while more perfect, also has its problems.

The main thing was that a solar cycle (about 365 days) and 12 lunar cycles (about 355 days) still do not coincide. And that with 355 days a year, the calendars no longer coincide with the seasons in a few years.

How was this problem solved? We have a day off every 4 years. And the Romans had the entire leap month. Every few years, the Romans added an additional thirteenth month to the year.

This month, called Mercedon, lasted 27 days and was added after February, shortening it to 23-24 days.

Theoretically, an additional month should have been added every two years. In practice, however, there was no strict system of how many years the thirteenth month should be added. The high priests of the Roman Empire had to decide that the time had come and that next year would have a leap month.

This they did not always do. Often times, the addition of the thirteenth month also acquired political significance. The terms of the officials of the Roman Empire began and ended at the beginning of the calendar year.

Thus, the priests who made the decision on the thirteenth month often used this power to extend the terms of official officials friendly to them in the Roman authorities or to shorten the terms of officials unfavorable to them.

In practice, this meant that sometimes the leap months were not very long and the calendar was turned off. And then to remedy this, the leap months were added for several years in a row.

Also, decisions about adding a leap month next year were often made not long before the beginning of that year and it took time before the entire empire realized them.

So ordinary people in the Roman Empire, especially those who lived outside of Rome, often did not know what day it was now.

This system has existed for almost 800 years. At some point during this period, when exactly the historical sources from the Roman era disagree, the first month of the year began to be no longer March, but January, but generally did not change. Until Julius Caesar came to power.

Julius Caesar reforms

Julius Caesar was not satisfied with the fact that the length of the year depended on the whims of the priests and not on objective astronomical phenomena.

He decided that it would be worthwhile to move to a calendar based on the solar cycle, according to which each year would have a very similar number of days: 365 or 366 days. Now this seems self-evident, but back then it was a novelty.

Julius Caesar abandoned the thirteenth month rising every few years and “distributed” the remaining 10 days compared to the previous calendar for the already existing months. The first year of the “new calendar” was 46 years old. pr. Kr.

Julius Caesar changed the month of rising to a day of rising and decided that the priests should never invent it, but strictly every 4 years.

However, the tradition of raising the issue, be it a month or a day, at the end of February was maintained. Because the day of the uprising contributed to February every few years, the usual day was not added to February.

Since then, the case has been maintained that February has 28 days. In 1582 in the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, the lengths of the months did not change, and February with 28 days remained to this day.