I hate February. But, that said, I do feel a little bad for it. Even though lots of things happen in February, like Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays, Chinese New Year (usually) and most often the Super Bowl — it still is the one month that just doesn’t seem to “fit in.”
It not only is the shortest month in the calendar, it’s also the only month to be affected by leap years. That means it gets and extra day every four years, and even with that extra day, it’s still the shortest month.
In some ways, I guess February is lucky to be here at all…originally the month of February never even existed. The old Roman calendar only had 10 months in a year. It seems like the Romans (like me) didn’t like the cold winter period so they just left it blank — and nameless. Eventually, the Roman calendar was revised to 12 lunar cycles and January and February were added to the existing 10 months.
Of course the calendar we use today is loosely based on the old Roman calendar and there are a lot of myths and legends surrounding how we got to where we are today. One “February” legend says that Romulus, the first king of Rome, devised a 10-month lunar calendar that began at the spring equinox (in March) and ended in December. Supposedly this explains the names of October (Oct=8) and December (Dec=10.) After December there weren’t any “official” months, probably because winter was considered “un-important” as to the harvesting of crops.
The second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, decided to make the calendar more accurate by syncing it up with the actual lunar year. So Numa added two months, January and February, after December to account for the extension of days to the existing calendar. Both January and February were given 28 days each. However, even numbers were considered bad luck at the time, so this didn’t sit well with Numa. He added a day to January but left February with 28 days. I guess Numa was okay with February staying at 28 days and “unlucky.” Maybe because the Romans honored the dead and performed rites of purification in February. The word februare means to purify.
Finally, around 45 B.C., Julius Caesar commissioned an expert to make a sun-based calendar, just like the Egyptian one. Caesar added an extra 10 days to the calendar and an extra day in February every four years, making the year average out to be 365.25 days.
So, for whatever reason, February just has never got the respect that maybe it deserves. I feel a little bad because it gets the short end of things, but I still don’t like it… maybe if it came along between May and June, I’d change my mind.
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