The leap year is added to our calendars to keep them in sync with the earth’s orbit.
The leap year is an additional day added to the calendar every four years, which brings the total number of days in a year to 366. This is because the earth doesn’t complete its orbit around the sun in 365 days and 6 hours, so it needs a little extra time to catch up. The extra day that’s added on February 29th each year was first introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, when he created what we now know as the Julian calendar.
It’s thought that Julius Caesar had been advised by astronomers at his time that it would take a little over 365 days for one complete cycle of the seasons, so he decided to add an extra day every four years. However, this created problems for those who were already living at that time. The Julian calendar was implemented before Christ was born, so it didn’t account for Jesus Christ’s birth and therefore Christmas celebrations were often held on December 25th rather than December 25th. There were also some problems with Easter being celebrated at different times depending on where you lived.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced his own version of the Julian calendar called Gregorian Calendar (named after himself). This updated version fixed some of these issues by shortening some months and making sure there was always an even number of days in a year. It also changed how leap years worked by only adding one extra day every four years instead of every four years.
