# When do "Leap Day" babies celebrate birthdays
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [June 7, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404 "2013-06-07T17:49:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/1 "2013-06-07T17:49:06Z")
In the Death Pool it was mentioned the Night Stalker was a Leap Day baby. Do most celebrate Feb 28th or March 1st?
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/2 "2013-06-07T18:34:27Z")
It depends.
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### Author:  [@Rain\_Soaked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rain_Soaked)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/3 "2013-06-07T19:06:26Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> It depends.
Agreed. Some celebrate the last day of February and others the day after Feb. 28.
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### Author:  [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/4 "2013-06-07T19:41:49Z")
I’m pretty sure my cousin always did it on March 1 (except, of course, on leap years, when his actual Feb 29 birthday rolled around).
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### Author:  [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/5 "2013-06-07T21:01:21Z")
In the case of my mother (who was born on a Monday, February 29th), they circumvented the problem by claiming she was born one day earlier. The birth certificate was issued accordingly.
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/6 "2013-06-07T21:11:40Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#):
>
> they circumvented the problem by claiming she was born one day earlier. The birth certificate was issued accordingly.
That seems a bit of an odd reaction. What was the reason for your grandparents’ decision to do this? Fear of uniqueness?
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### Author:  [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/7 "2013-06-07T21:16:21Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> That seems a bit of an odd reaction. What was the reason for your grandparents’ decision to do this? Fear of uniqueness?
As far as I recall, she was told that she was born late in the evening on that day, so it wasn’t such a big deal. I guess her parents wanted to avoid the oddity.
Edit:
I meant to write: She was born **early** in the morning on that day.
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### Author:  [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/8 "2013-06-07T21:20:46Z")
My late grandfather-in-law celebrated his birthday on the 28th, always, except obviously when there _was_ a 29th day.
The good thing was that he got extra special birthdays every few years when it really was his birthday! And then special ones like when he was the same age as his grandson, my SO 😃
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/9 "2013-06-07T21:48:08Z")
Physicist, art critic, and incorrigible punster George Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) had an interesting suggestion. as far as I know, no one’s taken it up:
> [@](#):
>
> Typical of his thinking and his pedagogical nature is an essay he wrote on “Consolations for the Unfortunates Born on the 29th of February”, addressing the often-asked question of when someone born on February 29th ought to celebrate their birthday. Should they age only ¼ as fast of the rest of us, or should they advance their birthday to the 29th of February or retard it to March 1? Lichtenberg argues that none of these is the correct solution.
> Lichtenberg argued that each person’s moment of birth is marked every year by the particular point where the sun stands in the ecliptic. Regardless of the calendar date, each moment of the year has a unique location specified by the solar longitude. The person ought to celebrate his or her birthday at the precise moment the sun reaches the same point it did the year of their birth.
> An interesting thing happens – the calendar day corresponding to this moment in the year is not always the same, but drifts over of three or four days. More interesting still, this will be true of anyone who decides to celebrate their birthday using the solar longitude as a benchmark, even if it doesn’t fall on February 29 – our calendar is not so firmly fixed as we usually think it is, and our birthday will meander around over a space of a few days during the course of the years. “The man born on some other day [than February 29] who celebrates it according to the [calendar] date is often actually mistaken,” Lichtenberg wrote, ”But no one notices it.”
Cite available upon request.
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### Author:  [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/10 "2013-06-07T22:14:52Z")
Some countries have legal definitions. According to Wikipedia, The UK and Hong Kong declare your birthday to be Mar 1 in common years. Taiwan and New Zealand use February 28.
They also later include the U.S. in this latter group, but I have doubts that is true. For one thing I’d assume it was done on a state-by-state basis.
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### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/11 "2013-06-07T22:48:25Z")
All the Leap Babies I knew celebrated on their birthday–February 29th. If you only have a party once every four years, it can be a heck of a party.
Problem is, when you send out invitations for your 5th birthday party, you end up with some weird presents for a guy in college.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2013, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-birthdays/660404/12 "2013-06-07T22:54:43Z")
[**Cecil** expounds](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1216/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-their-birthdays).
Summary: He shows how to compute the right day (February 28 or March 1) by computing one’s age _by the hour_, starting from the hour of birth, and adding exactly 365¼ days’ worth of hours for each year. Depending on the exact hour of birth, you get some pattern of 2/28 and 3/1 birthdays for the next three years.