All the Single Guys - Watch Out, it's Bachelor's Day

Bachelor's Day Click here for Audio

Old Irish legend and history decrees that a deal was struck by Saint Bridget with Saint Patrick on Leap Year's Day, February 29th, permitting single women to balance their traditional role (in keeping with the balancing of the calendar), by proposing to the single men of their fancy, just once every every 4 years. Well, that's all it takes after all, a yes is generally a yes and a no is generally a no. Unless, in those days, a significant reversal of fortune may have come the way of either party in between this window of opportune, fourth year proposals.

Widely known throughout Europe in the Middle Ages as “Bachelors’ Day”, any unsuspecting fellow of old who saw fit to refuse a valid marriage proposal made on February 29th, would have had to face the consequences of ponying up some cash, or clothing as a penalty. In fact, the higher his status, tradition and even some laws, dictated that such a refusal penalty might amount to 12 pairs of gloves per rejected suitor! (Don't you think that today, a dozen pairs of new shoes might ease the pain of a rejected would-be bride?) The lengths that some women would go to hide a bare ring finger must have made it pretty dicey, cost-wise for the pick of the crop in the prospective husband department.

Today, "Bachelor's Day", otherwise known as "Single Stick" day's a considerably big deal in China, where, unlike the more relaxed dating scene of the modern Western World, the pressure's on to find a marriage mate before hitting 30.

February 29th is also known as Saint Oswald's Day. Oswald of Worcestor was the Archbishop of York from 972 to his death on February 29th, 992. Oswald founded a number of monasteries across Britain, including the great Benedectine Abbey of Ramsey, in the East Anglian Cambridgeshire Fens, not far from the Benedictine Croyland Abbey, in the Lincolnshire border market town where I was born and raised.. In its heyday, remote Ramsey Abbey was home to 80 scholarly monks, a famous library and renowned school. Flash forward 500 years to the reign of Henry VIII and his ruthless dissolution of the monasteries and Ramsey Abbey's subsequent destruction. Stone from this great monastery has survived the centuries in historic structures of the bell tower of the parish church, Abbey School and Abbey Gatehouse.

Propose, you might do on Leap Year's Day, but if you are of Greek decent, pay heed to the traditions of the culture in Greece by postponing the wedding to a non-Leap Year's Day. Especially unlucky, the Greek's believe, is tying the knot on Leap Year's Day itself.

Similarly, it is said that the Scots are not big fans of Leap Year's Day birthdays, holding a February 29th arrival as inopportune, though 10,000 'Leapers' from around the modern world would disagree.

Keeping our calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun, Leap Years mark the fact that it takes the Earth around 365.242199 days to circle once around the Sun. Without the addition of one day almost every four years, we'd lose approximately six hours each year - 24 calendar days every 100 years.

So what are you planning to do with your extra day? The popular Tea Room on Western Avenue, here in Petaluma, is closing its doors for Leap Year's Day, giving cooks and staff a rare, once-every-four-years' mid-week opportunity to spend the day at leisure!