In the simplest and most understandable terms, the reason February has 28 days does not rely on any scientific basis but rather on the “superstitions” of the Romans.
Today, almost all countries and territories around the world use the Gregorian calendar as the official means of measuring time. We often think that dividing a year into 12 months is a fixed rule, but the reality is quite different.
The Gregorian calendar is the officially used calendar today.
Before the Gregorian calendar was introduced, the Julian calendar was in use in Turkey until 1927. Even before that, there was the Roman calendar.
The Roman calendar originally divided a year into 10 months based on the lunar cycle. Compared to the current calendar, these 10 months would fall roughly between March and December, while the period from January to February remained unnamed.
The main reason for this was that the first two months of the year were winter, with cold weather preventing crops from growing and producing yields. Thus, this period was considered unnecessary.
By the 8th century BC, Roman King Numa Pompilius decided to add 2 new months to the calendar: January and February, bringing the total to 12 lunar cycles in a year.
The Roman calendar was based on the lunar cycle.
At that time, the Romans considered even numbers to be unlucky, which is why a month could only have 29 or 31 days instead of 30.
Unfortunately, any odd number, when multiplied by 12, results in an even number. This means that if they wanted the total number of days in a year to be an odd number (365 days), at least one month in the year had to have an even number of days.
After discussion, the Romans decided to choose February as the only month in the year with 28 days because this was also the time they honored the deceased. Perhaps they felt there was nothing more unlucky than death itself?
The Julian calendar was the first calendar based on the solar cycle.
In 46 BC, Julius Caesar, a Roman general and politician, reorganized the calendar to reflect the solar cycle instead of the lunar cycle as before, creating what is known as the Julian calendar. A year later, this new calendar was officially put into widespread use.
It wasn’t until 1583 that Pope Gregory XIII made adjustments to produce the Gregorian calendar we know today. However, somehow, February with its 28-day length still exists after all these changes. Of course, in leap years, this number increases to 29 days, but that’s a whole different story.
