There are 28 days in February because February was the low month on the totem pole.
Originally, the Roman calendar had 12 months of 29 or 30 days, beginning in March, with an extra (intercalary) month thrown in every other year to get things back in sync with the seasons. Unfortunately this led to abuses, as officials added or dropped intercalary months to extend their time in office or to hasten elections.
When Julius (Caesar, the Roman Emperor) imposed a new calendar -- using the old months of the Roman calendar but the 365.25 days of the Egyptian year), the year began in March, or the month of Mars (Martius mensis).
Mars was the god of War and the Roman society's schedule was centred on their ability to go to war. Before March, the roads were too muddy for armies to travel.
Most months had no names and they were simply numbered.
The first four were named for
Mars (god of war),
aperire (the verb "to open", as in flowers),
Maia (goddess of Spring) and
Juno (wife of Jupiter and goddess of marriages)
From the fifth to the tenth, they were simply
quintilis, sextilis, september, october, november and december
(quintus = 5th, sextus = 6th, septem = seven, octo = eight, novem = nine and decem = 10)
During the 10th month, the armies had to come back, otherwise they were stuck on the other side of the river Rubicon, the roads being too muddy (and they needed permission to cross the river before coming into town). Thus the end of December marked "Peace on Earth" as the Roman armies stopped warring.
The winter period had no formal months for a while. In 700 BC, king Pompilius added January and February at the end. In 450 BC, a reform of what we would call the Civil Code (akin to the French equivalent of the Common Law) made January the start of the year for civil matters. But the government continued to use March as the start of the formal year.
In some of the important religious calendars, they celebrated the beginning of the new religious year with the god Janus (god of doors and also able to see the past and the future). That seemed appropriate enough. Janus overlooking the passage from the old year to the new year.
"Februarius mensis" literally meant: month of fevers. Purification rituals were run (trying to drive away the fevers), the ritual being called Februa. The ritual survived in the Christian Church ritual under the name Candlemas. An associated minor god (or goddess in some regions) came after the name of the month was established.
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Julius also formalized the distribution of days (it was very unequal before that; e.g., April only had 29 days).
Julius set the pattern as 31, 30 for the entire year:
March = 31, April = 30, May = 31... alternating like that, leaving February with 30.
Except this was a bit too long (366 days) so February would actually lose a day for 3 years out of 4 (actually, when Julius's reform started out, it was very confusing -- the regular 4-year cycle became official after Julius's death).
We think of it as "adding a day every 4th year" but it started off the other way: removing a day most of the time.
When Julius died, they named a month after him: July. It already had 31 days at the time.
Two generations later, Augustus became emperor. He really thought highly of himself, so he decreed that he too should have a month named after himself. He picked the 6th one (right after Julius's month). But then he noticed that it only had 30 days. So he made it 31, moved the sequence off by one (making September 30, October 31, November 30 and December 31).
He stole the extra day from February and did not touch January (the government calendar did not really care about these two months anyways, since the armies couldn't move).
So, thank you, Augustus, for leaving us a strange calendar.
Since then, many attempts have been made to restructure the calendar (including suggestions like yours), but they never worked.
The last chance of doing it with a Roman based calendar was in 1582 when 10 days were simply removed from the month of October (for that one year only) in order to bring the Spring Equinox back to March 21. Even that caused riots and deaths throughout the Catholic Empire (and elsewhere).
The French revolutionary calendar was also a bold attempt to give the world a modern calendar, with 12 months of 30 days (three weeks of ten days), plus a bonus 5 days (or 6 on leap years) of celebration, a period that would not belong to any month (and was placed in Summer for better enjoyment). The year of that calendar began at Autumn Equinox
Originally, the Roman calendar had 12 months of 29 or 30 days, beginning in March, with an extra (intercalary) month thrown in every other year to get things back in sync with the seasons. Unfortunately this led to abuses, as officials added or dropped intercalary months to extend their time in office or to hasten elections.
When Julius (Caesar, the Roman Emperor) imposed a new calendar -- using the old months of the Roman calendar but the 365.25 days of the Egyptian year), the year began in March, or the month of Mars (Martius mensis).
Mars was the god of War and the Roman society's schedule was centred on their ability to go to war. Before March, the roads were too muddy for armies to travel.
Most months had no names and they were simply numbered.
The first four were named for
Mars (god of war),
aperire (the verb "to open", as in flowers),
Maia (goddess of Spring) and
Juno (wife of Jupiter and goddess of marriages)
From the fifth to the tenth, they were simply
quintilis, sextilis, september, october, november and december
(quintus = 5th, sextus = 6th, septem = seven, octo = eight, novem = nine and decem = 10)
During the 10th month, the armies had to come back, otherwise they were stuck on the other side of the river Rubicon, the roads being too muddy (and they needed permission to cross the river before coming into town). Thus the end of December marked "Peace on Earth" as the Roman armies stopped warring.
The winter period had no formal months for a while. In 700 BC, king Pompilius added January and February at the end. In 450 BC, a reform of what we would call the Civil Code (akin to the French equivalent of the Common Law) made January the start of the year for civil matters. But the government continued to use March as the start of the formal year.
In some of the important religious calendars, they celebrated the beginning of the new religious year with the god Janus (god of doors and also able to see the past and the future). That seemed appropriate enough. Janus overlooking the passage from the old year to the new year.
"Februarius mensis" literally meant: month of fevers. Purification rituals were run (trying to drive away the fevers), the ritual being called Februa. The ritual survived in the Christian Church ritual under the name Candlemas. An associated minor god (or goddess in some regions) came after the name of the month was established.
---
Julius also formalized the distribution of days (it was very unequal before that; e.g., April only had 29 days).
Julius set the pattern as 31, 30 for the entire year:
March = 31, April = 30, May = 31... alternating like that, leaving February with 30.
Except this was a bit too long (366 days) so February would actually lose a day for 3 years out of 4 (actually, when Julius's reform started out, it was very confusing -- the regular 4-year cycle became official after Julius's death).
We think of it as "adding a day every 4th year" but it started off the other way: removing a day most of the time.
When Julius died, they named a month after him: July. It already had 31 days at the time.
Two generations later, Augustus became emperor. He really thought highly of himself, so he decreed that he too should have a month named after himself. He picked the 6th one (right after Julius's month). But then he noticed that it only had 30 days. So he made it 31, moved the sequence off by one (making September 30, October 31, November 30 and December 31).
He stole the extra day from February and did not touch January (the government calendar did not really care about these two months anyways, since the armies couldn't move).
So, thank you, Augustus, for leaving us a strange calendar.
Since then, many attempts have been made to restructure the calendar (including suggestions like yours), but they never worked.
The last chance of doing it with a Roman based calendar was in 1582 when 10 days were simply removed from the month of October (for that one year only) in order to bring the Spring Equinox back to March 21. Even that caused riots and deaths throughout the Catholic Empire (and elsewhere).
The French revolutionary calendar was also a bold attempt to give the world a modern calendar, with 12 months of 30 days (three weeks of ten days), plus a bonus 5 days (or 6 on leap years) of celebration, a period that would not belong to any month (and was placed in Summer for better enjoyment). The year of that calendar began at Autumn Equinox
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