Talk:Leap day

Redirect target should be 29 February?
Right now, and in British (and thus American) law with effect from 1752, leap day is 29 February. The reason that the British Calendar Act had to declare 29 February to be leap day was because existing law declared it to be 24 February twice over (or a 48 hour "day" named 24 February): see Bissextile day. The Gregorian reform did not introduce 29 February, indeed the ecclesiastical calendar of Western Christendom continued to have a bissextile day long after the change (and apparently there is still at least an echo of it in the ecclesiastical calendar of the Catholic Church). The British Calendar Act explicitly directs and authorises the (established) Church to recast its own ecclesiastic calendar accordingly.

To simply redirect Leap day to 29 February would deprive readers of the wider context, which (in my view at least), is a key part of our mission.

, is my summary broadly correct? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:16, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

and that the first Day of January next following the said last Day of December shall be reckoned, taken, deemed and accounted to be the first Day of the Year of our Lord 1752;"
 * I agree that that "Leap day" should continue to redirect to the appropriate section of "Leap year". But when I read the calendar act at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Anno_Regni_Georgii_II_Regis_Magn%C3%A6_Brita/uZmk2DWrzbEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA3&printsec=frontcover I don't still see the word bissextile. O do see, in the tables section a table for February with 29 days, but I'm not sure if that is enough to say that the calendar act abolishes observing 24 February twice. Are you aware of a passage that says this more explicitly?
 * It would be important for the passage to have been made law before US independence, since changes after then would have no effect in the US. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * see last sentence of Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. So yes it was made law 15 years earlier. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:32, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * i don't have time right now to verify that it unambiguously answers your question, will check this pm. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:37, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ... and yes, you were right: it was never formally abolished but just fell out of use. The appendix to the Calendar Act giving the calendar for February dealt with the Feast of St Matthias issue for the Church of England, so I guess it could be argued that this is the statutory basis? Annoyingly, I forgot that I investigated this stuff in late 2022 for Bissextus and it all explained there. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:20, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * To make it more complicated, the New York State "General Construction Law" § 50 states
 * Time, computation. Time shall continue to be computed in this state according to the Gregorian or new style. The  first  day  of  each year  after the year seventeen hundred and fifty-two is the first day of January, according to such style.
 * New York can hardly be ignored, since many consider it the financial capital of the world. So does this mean whatever law is being "continue"d? Does it mean "new style", which might be the same as the British Calendar Act? Or does it mean Gregorian, which counts 24 February twice? I suppose you would have to find a case on point decided by the New York State Court of Appeals (which is what they call their supreme court). Jc3s5h (talk) 18:57, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Short of a court judgment, we can only guess. However [as m'Learned Friends like to say, allegedly],
 * I think we may assume that by "new style" they mean the words to be as defined in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (aka in the US, the "British Calendar Act").
 * I can't believe that they meant the leap year February as promulgated by Gregory in 1582; apart from the fact that it was a matter of principle to ignore the Pope, the practice of two days numbered 24 February had fallen out of use in any case. In particular, the appendix to the Calendar Act only made 29 Feb de jure in the established Church of England what was de facto everywhere else; as we have already discussed, they didn't identify any need to formally abolish it in civil law. So I'm confident that we can reject that possibility.
 * Their first day of  each year  after the year seventeen hundred and fifty-two is a bit strange. Clause 1 says
 * "That in and throughout all his Majesty’s Dominions and Countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, belonging or subject to the Crown of Great Britain, the said Supputation, according to which the Year of our Lord beginneth on the 25th Day of March, shall not be made use of from and after the last Day of December 1751;
 * so they seem to be introducing the new rule a year after everyone else. But unless something dramatic happened, I think we may just consign that one to the cock-up theory of history. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:04, 31 January 2024 (UTC)