Why is Febrary so Short?

By Amanda Lawrence

We all know that old poem “Thirty days hath November, April, June and December…” We also know that the poem ends with February who does not have thirty or thirty-one days, like every other month, but twenty-eight. February goes even farther in differences by being the only month to change its number of days. Even with the addition of days, February still doesn’t meet the length expectancy of months. So what’s the deal with that?!?! Well I did some research. Our modern calendar is based off of the old calendar in Roman times which only had ten months, starting with March and ending with December. (Hint: September, October, November, December; Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten) However, the days for the year didn’t quite line up to the seasons so two months, January and February, were added to the END of the year. (Yes, January was the second to last month, not the first.) The Romans considered even numbers to be unlucky and made eleven months, seven with 31 days and four with 29. But there still wasn’t the correct number of days. So why is February so short? They added another month, at the end of the year, to get the right number, but it would have an even number of days. Because this was considered unlucky, they wanted to make it short so the unlucky month would pass quicker than the other months. So happy February and enjoy your unreasonably short month.