February with 28 days - what gives?

Well, it all started a long time ago in a land far, far away, seems that a LONG time ago our calendar only had 10 months and they started with March. Why March you might be wondering, I know I was. Well that was the beginning of spring and when a society is agrarian, that is an important time and since what is now January and February had ZERO agricultural relevance, there was no need to count them. I also learned that September, October, November and December have latin roots in 7,8,9, and ten respectively. Seems odd since they are now months 9,10,11 and 12 - but I found there is a reason for that as well. Before the overly egotistical Roman Emperors started meddling July and August were originally called Quintilis, which was fifth and Sextilis, which was sixth. I could not find it but I suppose that March, April, May and June were somehow derived from 1,2,3, and 4, don’t know for sure but I would bet a dollar on it.

So how did we get to where we are now and how in world did one of the two new months end up with 28 days? It seems that it was a political, religious and superstitious decision made roughly 2700 years ago by the Roman King Numa Pompilius. Before that, the Romans had a ten-month calendar with 304 days, that included 61 winter days (between December and March). Those days were not assigned to any of the 10 existing months. Well in the 8th century BC astronomy was not as understood as it is today and although he was close there were a lot of leap days in there to keep the calendar on time with the actual seasons. Still pretty impressive when you think about it, 8000 years before the time of Christ we had gotten to with 10 days of figuring out that the planet took 365 days to circle the sun. Especially considering it was not until the Copernicus proposed a crazy assed theory that Earth revolves around the Sun. He based his research on the heliocentric theory but was never able to prove it. It was not until Galileo came along and observed that truth and later when Kepler did the math was it proven and that was not until the 1500’s AD (or CE for you common era folks).

Many years later, Julius Caesar, after becoming dictator perpetuo (dictator for life) reorganized the calendar yet again, he somehow figured out the right number of days - giving it 365. Julius Caesar also created the month of July, in his own honor and gave it more days than any other month at 31 days. A bit later when Augustus became Caesar he wanted his own month as well and he wanted it to have more says as well, hence July and August being messing up the original number system for the months and why both have 31 days. There are those who say he made February 29 days long, 30 in leap year, and that Augustus Caesar later pilfered a day; others say Julius just kept it at 28. When Christianity spread further (because of the organizational skills of Emperor Constantine), the beginning of the Calendar was changed to coincide with the month epiphany, rather than the pagan tradition of the month of the vernal equinox that more coincided with the planting and harvests. Some others say that since it was last month it simply ran out of days because of the pilfering by the Emperors of Rome. Others say that it was all stolen from Egyptians (who used a solar calendar in honor of the sun god Ra instead of the lunar calendar the Roman one was based on), which I believe is probably closer to the truth. But like any bureaucracy the Roman Senate created the now alternating (except Julius and Augustus) number of days in a month, who knows why.

So who really knows why February has only 28 days, the only thing I do know is that like many things in our lives today the current calendar was organized by the Roman Empire, those guys we WAY ahead of their time.