Nothing about the odd day has ever been completely settled.

Here is the current issue: People are mashing-up Leap Day and Sadie Hawkins Day. Folks that are actually born on Feb. 29 -- the day that usually isn't -- and form groups like The Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies and built the website www.leapzine.com, are a little upset.

First, let's get the story straight and the math correct about this aberration. Most, but not all, know Leap Day is a man-made design to retrofit us to changing seasons and the larger universal equation. There may be perfect sunsets, but no perfect calendars.

The solar year lasts 365.2422 days long, so the current Gregorian calendar, the one hanging in modern kitchens, adds an extra day in every year divisible by four (except in those years divisible by 100, then it's not a leap year).

It is a leap year, however, if it's divisible by 400 -- so, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are NOT leap years, while year 2000 and 2400 are, according to Geoff Chester, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Naval Observatory, the official national timekeepers.

Chester has become an expert on the subject over the years and recounted the story of Pope Gregory XIII convening the top astrologers and scientists in 1582 to come up with a better calendar than the old Julian (from Julius Caesar) system that was in vogue.

The Pope and Catholic Church wanted to ensure the Spring Equinox would fall predictably (March 20 or March 21) each year, in order to keep their traditional Holy days in sync. The Julian calendar was an improvement from the Roman lunar calendar and included Leap Days, but nonetheless got a day out of whack about every 128 years.

Not that the Gregorian calendar solves everything for all eternity.

"Eventually, there will be an error in this calendar as well," Chester said. "Every 400-year cycle is about 28 seconds longer than the astronomical year, and eventually this will accumulate until the calendar is off a day. Sometime in the year 3,300. Or thereabouts."

Global adoption of the improved Gregorian calendar came slower than one might expect.

Protestant countries like England -- not big fans of popely edicts -- and her colonies, like those on the U.S. Eastern seaboard, didn't abide by the Gregorian calendar until 200 years later -- 1752 -- by which time the start of spring was off by about 11 days.

Japan, for example, didn't accept the new calendar until 1873; Russia, not until 1917; and China, in 1949. And, adoption is still not complete -- the Eastern Orthodox Church last voted to reject the Gregorian calendar and retain the Julian calendar in 1971.

Chester said none of this is to say that someone won't come along and invent a better calendar that removes the inaccuracy entirely.

However, the latest issue with Leap Day is the gerry-mandering of Sadie Hawkins Day, traditionally a mid-November event. Strictly American, it was born in the 1930s in Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" comic strip. There, the unmarried women of Dogpatch ran after the town's bachelors, albeit given a head start, in a foot race. Getting caught meant wedlock.

The cartoon phenomena caught on with college and high school dances, but now seems to be getting confused with the Leap Day mythology surrounding St. Brigid back in fifth-century Ireland.

To cite two examples, Gov. Thomas Johnson and Bestheda-Chevy Chase high schools are holding dances tonight and Shamrock Restaurant in Thurmont is offering a special Sadie Hawkins menu this weekend. Try to follow, please.

The story goes: St. Brigid complained to St. Patrick (whose misconstrued day is coming next) that women were fed up waiting for local men to propose marriage.

So, after some negotiation, St. Patrick agreed Leap Day (this would have been the Julian calendar Leap Day) as a time when women could have their go at the Irish men.

Every four years, or St. Patrick apparently thought, was a fair interval.

Pushing the envelope further in 1288, according to numerous sources, a law decreed by Queen Margaret allowed a maiden to "bespeak the man she likes" on Leap Day. If he refused to marry her, a small fine could be assessed.

"I'm not an expert on Sadie Hawkins Day, but I am expert on Leap Day," said Peter Brouwer, founder of the website leapyearday.com. "Leap Day has always had a historical link with women's empowerment, but it is not Sadie Hawkins Day.

"Sadie Hawkins Day should be held every year, and it should be a special occasion. Leap Day is once every four years."

Brouwer, who will be 52 on Friday, one of 7,000 members of the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies, hopes to make Leap Day a national holiday. He says it's overdue.

"Not like a federal day where everyone is off from work, but where it's written and appears on the calendar," Brouwer said.

Believe it or not, he continued, Leap Year babies face, not intentionally or mean-spiritedly, real discrimination.

"We just had someone two weeks ago who was pulled out of line at the Mexican border because a transportation official thought they were using a phony passport," he said.

Brouwer added that people born on Feb. 29 occasionally have trouble logging their birth dates on to computer databases and opening bank or web accounts.

"It wasn't until just recently that YouTube made changes accepting Feb. 29 as a birthday," Brouwer said. "Programmers just don't know about it or they just aren't aware of the problem."

Yet, for all the trouble, Feb. 29 isn't a birthday anyone wants to swap, Brouwer said. There have ben recorded benefits.

In fact, Chester, from the U.S. Naval Observatory, said his great-grandfather was born on that day and used it as technicality to skirt official retirement rules mandating that resignation by his 65th birthday.

"He stayed in until he was almost 70 and served 50 years," Chester said.

A regular downside, Brouwer noted, is most Leap Year babies are known as "strict Februarians," meaning they wish to celebrate their big day on Feb. 28 as opposed to March 1.

In non-leap years this causes problems for Leap Year babies wishing to buy their first legal drink on what should be their 21st birthday. Most bars make them wait until March 1, despite actually being born the previous month.

However, Brouwer said, Leap Year babies have a unique appreciation for the peculiar, mysterious universe in which they arrive every four years.

It's a quality they can share with the rest of us.

"That makes us special, it's just cool," Brouwer said. "But it's important for everyone to step back and think about the sun and the moon and planets and pay attention to the start of spring -- which we know because of Leap Day will be March 20 this year -- and all the implications that has in life to us."