Us chatroom peeps want to know the following: If you are born on the 29th february (leap year) do you only celebrate your birthday every 4 years? We know this isn't true, but what actually happens? :eek:
I'd imagine they'd celebrate it on the 28th. I know that some people say they're 8 when they're actually 32 or something, because they count the birthdays they've actually celebrated. And yes, wikipedia! Wikipedia has all the answers!
I once had a teacher who was born on a leap year. According to her, she celebrated her birthday on the 29th during leap years but on others, she was allowed to decide whether her birthday would fall on the 28th or the 1st. She always picked the latter, FWIW. I'd suggest using Wikipedia just to be sure, though.
Well technically you do only have a birthday every four years but most people celebrate either the day before or the day after.
You would still become a year older on the transition from 28th Feb to 1st March whether or not there was a 29th to celebrate on. A year is 365 (or 366) days, so when you have lived those days you must be a year older. The fact that the actual calender date does not exist every year does not affect your legal age. So someone born 32 calendar years ago on 29th Feb cannot be 8 years old as that would mean their years are 1461 days long. That is impossible as their years cannot be a different length to anyone else's. All that is missing is the actual calendar date of the birthday, so it is up to the person whether they celebrate on the closest day (or both days!) or simply age a year without having a birthday.
While Wikipedia is, indeed, the defining whimsical reference point of our generation, I'd simply imagine that they'd pick another day. Sometimes they'd maybe change it, within reason. One day after? One day before? Maybe anywhere in the same week? It'd be quite nice to be able to choose when your birthday was each year - I got quite lucky with mine, and if I could choose it'd make things like this happen more often; my birthday was on the same day in 2007 that one of my favourite comedians came really locally to play a warm up gig for his national tour.
There was a guy who lived down the street from me who was born on the 29th. On the years when there was no 29th, he got to celebrate his birthday on BOTH the 28th and the 1st. But he was kinda creepy all round so it didn't surprise anyone.
