Minister’s Letter: February 2012

Welcome to February 2012! This year February gives to us an extra day. It’s a leap year. So often we associate leap years with the opportunity for a woman to make a proposal of marriage, instead of waiting for the man in her life to take the initiative. The man has to accept or pay a fine, according to a supposed law of 1288 which states that if the man refuses he must pay compensation. This ranged from a kiss to £1 to a silk gown. Quite a number of folk traditions are associated with men who refuse a proposal, stating they have to buy various additions to the ladies’ wardrobes!

Surely a leap year and February 29th, the extra day means more than that?

The whole idea of an extra day in February comes from the fact that leap years are added to the calendar to keep it working properly. The 365 days of the annual calendar are meant to match up with the solar year. A solar year is the time it takes the Earth to complete its orbit around the Sun – about one year.

One year has the length of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 47 seconds. Because this is rather unfunctional, a normal year has been given 365 days and a leap year 366 days. On leap years, February 29th is added, which doesn’t exist in a normal year. A leap year is every 4 years, but not every 100 years, then again every 400 years.

What happens if your birthday falls on February 29th? Are you only a quarter of your actual age? Nice thought, along with the extended wardrobe. Various conventions around the world have made sure someone can celebrate their birthday on an adjoining day. But for those born on the 29th you are known as ‘leapers’, so you keep something of the ‘youthful’ whim.

February 29th this year falls in the first week of Lent. Lent is a time of year when we think traditionally of giving something up, in recognition of Christ fasting for 40 days in the Wilderness. Jesus went into the wilderness to spend time meditating on what he should be doing to proclaim God’s love. So nowadays many people think more objectively about what they can do in Lent rather than of what they can give up. In doing so the hope is that they too may enhance the ‘Kingdom of God’ in the here and now.

For February, here’s a challenge for you. What are you going to do in Lent to improve the quality of your life, the life of those around you, or for the good of others? If forty days seems too long to keep up the ‘moral good’ why not pledge to do something for someone else on February 29th? Use your 5 hours, 48 minutes and 47 seconds plus to think about how much God gives to us in each of our 365–6 days. How can we use what we have to do more than swell the wardrobes of those who have enough?

Enjoy your extra day,

Every blessing

Rev Jean Quick