If you are born on Feb 29th, when do you celebrate your birthday each year?

In response to last week’s question,  “If you are born on Feb 29th, when do you celebrate your birthday each year?”, my friend Richard suggested, “3 out of every 4 years, those people take the advice of Walt Disney and celebrate a “very merry un-birthday”!  They can also say with confidence “I’m younger than I look”.”

My video and sailing friend Jodie observed, “That's only an issue when you're under 35. After that, we're happy to skip a few years.”  My DISH friend Mark confirmed this, “I have a good friend born on Feb 29th who celebrated on the 28th until her 21st birthday and on the Mar 1st until she was 35. After her 35th birthday, she then opted to acknowledge an age increase only on Feb 29th going forward. It's been a running joke for years. Although we met in 3rd grade, I'm 55 and she's about to turn 40. Some girls have all the luck.”  

My sailing friend Kurt agreed, “Just once every four years, that is one way to stay young.”  My cycling friend Ted responded, “You’re just aging at 1/4th the rate!! This would make me a 12 yr old!”

My dad’s beach buddy Bob sympathized with quadrennial celebrants, “When you go to renew your driver’s license, they can't find the date on the calendar.”

Please share your thoughts about "things that make you go 'Hmmm' “:

Is coffee a the person upon whom one coughs?

Live well...laugh often and heartily…. have a good week and never regret anything that made you smile!

Hal

A detailed answer to Feb 29 from the book Know It All:  What you celebrate on your birthday isn't the annual arrival of your birth date; it's the fact that you're one year older. One year = one complete revolution by the earth around the sun = 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds. To figure the right day to celebrate your birthday, you add 365 and one-quarter days to the hour of your birth. Suppose you were born February 29, 1972 at 10 PM. Then 365 and one-quarter days went by and behold, the first anniversary of your birth hour came on March 1, 1973, at about 4 AM.

The second and third anniversaries also fell on March 1, at 10 AM and 4 PM respectively. Comes year four (1976), and your anniversary is back where it started, February 29 at 10 PM.

Things would have worked out differently if you'd been born at 4 AM on leap day. Your first, second, and third birth-hour anniversaries would have occurred on February 28 at 10 AM, 4 PM, and 10 PM, respectively. If you'd been born at 4 PM, your first anniversary would fall on February 28 but your second and third on March 1. What happens for leap-day babies born at other hours is left as an exercise for the student.

The real problem isn't leap-day people, it's those smug non-leap-day babies who think all they've got to do to be in synch with the cosmos is celebrate their birthdays on the same date every year. Not a chance, Lance.

If you were born February 28, 1972, at 4 AM, you were supposed to celebrate all your non-leap-year birthdays on February 27. Did you? Of course not. Before you were out of diapers you were shaking down the 'rents for gifts under false pretenses. Considering how today's youth start out, it's no wonder so many come to no good.

But look on the bright side. The year 2000, thank Jah, will be a normal leap year. Years divisible by 100 usually aren't. (The rule is: year divisible by 100, no leap year unless also divisible by 400, in which case leap year. It's to keep the calendar lined up with the solar system. Trust Uncle Cecil.) 

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1216/when-do-leap-day-babies-celebrate-their-birthdays