Why does february have fewer days

So he added January and February to the end of the calendar. Because Romans believed even numbers to be unlucky, each month had an odd number of days, which alternated between 29 and But, in order to reach days, one month had to be an even number. February was chosen to be the unlucky month with 28 days. According to Slate, this choice may be due to the fact that Romans honored the dead and performed rites of purification in February.

In fact, the word februare means "to purify" in the dialect of the ancient Sabine tribe. In an attempt to realign the two, the Romans added a day leap month as needed. If Mercedonius was used, it began on February Because the leap month was inconsistent, this too had its obvious flaws. In 45 B. The Julian Calendar added a little more than 10 days to each year, making each month either 30 or 31 days long, except for February.

To account for the entire Looking for more Never Stop Asking "Why? Catch up on all of the past "Whys" on Pinterest or on the blog! Mask Policy Update: Masks are required indoors for all visitors ages 2 and older.

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Search Want to search our collection? Search here. We use cookies to ensure you have the best browsing experience and to help us improve our website. Find out more Accept Cookies. Everything else was just called winter! An agenda with pages open on the months of January and February. Image courtesy of Pixabay. However, with the calendar only being 10 months long, it began to fall out of sync with the Lunar calendar which tracked the phases of the moon.

The Lunar calendar had days a year and 12 lunar cycles or months while the Roman calendar only accounted for So were the Romans! To solve this problem, the king added two more months after December and called them January and February. These are a bunch of colourful, random numbers. Well, not really. This caused more problems because ancient Romans thought that even numbers 2,4,6,8, etc.

One month had to be an even number so poor February drew the unlucky straw with 28 days! Probably just because it was the last month of the year.