[SPEAKER 1] We have team coverage this week of leap year. It's once every four years. Why not? February 29th is tomorrow. Now we're going to tell you how the day is associated with an Irish tradition.
[NAT] It is leap year, you know, in Ireland, a woman can propose to a man on the 29th of February. Dad, I'm not going to Dublin.
[SPEAKER 1] That's from the trailer for the 2010 Amy Adams movie, Leap Year. A character travels to Ireland with plans to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day.
[SPEAKER 2] This is a real Irish practice, which some accounts trace back 1, 500 years to the moment when St. Bridget supposedly proposed to St. Patrick, which seems like a romantic story, although St. Patrick biographer Philip Freeman says it's wrong.
[FREEMAN] There's nothing in the earliest sources on St. Patrick and St. Bridget to suggest that Bridget ever proposed to Patrick. I think since Bridget was a nun and Patrick was a celibate priest, this is pretty unlikely.
[SPEAKER 1] Never mind the facts. People have held on to this legend. It's a nice story.
[PARKIN] It looks like female empowerment. The premise of women being able to ask men to marry them.
[SPEAKER 1] Katherine Parkin of Monmouth University asked why this tradition really has persisted so long.
[PARKIN] What I discovered is that it was actually intended to ridicule the idea that women would have this opportunity.
[SPEAKER 2] Parkin collects leap year postcards featuring women proposing to men going back to the early 1900s.
[PARKIN] They're portrayed as taller. than the men. They're portrayed as bigger, heavier set than small men. And so they use all of these visual imagery to suggest that the women are taking a man's role. And so there are all these ways in which that plays to a public that sees that as absurd.
[SPEAKER 1] But people, as people want to do, still give the tradition their own meaning. NPR listener [NAME] in Austin, Texas, told us what she did with her boyfriend [NAME] on the last Leap Day in 2020.
[MODICA] I got down on my knee and I had a flower and I proposed to him with the flower. And I gave him this long speech of why we were meant to be together forever.
[SPEAKER 1] Another Leap Day approaches and they're still married.
[SPEAKER 2] Another NPR listener, [NAME], got in touch from Hendersonville, Tennessee about his proposal to his then girlfriend, [NAME], on Leap Day in 2008.
[FREITAG] I ended up getting like a little trinket box of a frog to put the ring in, and I took her out to her favorite restaurant and asked her if she would take the Leap with me.
[SPEAKER 2] Alright, she did! They've been married for almost 15 years, and thanks to the reality of Leap Year, tomorrow is just the fourth anniversary of their engagement.
This leap year, we look at the origins of an custom: women proposing to men on February 29.
(Jenn Miranda/Adobe Stock)
February 29th is Thursday this year. We take a look at the origins of an Irish custom – women proposing to men on this extra day.
This is a real Irish practice, which some accounts trace back 1,500 years to the moment when St. Bridget supposedly proposed to St. Patrick. It seems like a romantic story, although St. Patrick biographer Philip Freeman says it's wrong.
"There's nothing in the earliest sources on St. Patrick and St. Bridget to suggest that Bridget ever proposed to Patrick," Freeman said. "I think since Bridget was a nun and Patrick was a celibate priest, this is pretty unlikely."
Never mind the facts, people have held on to this legend.
Katherine Parkin of Monmouth University asked why this tradition has persisted.
"It looks like female empowerment, the premise of women being able to ask men to marry them," she said. "What I discovered is that it was actually intended to ridicule the idea that women would have this opportunity."
Parkin collects leap year postcards featuring women proposing to men going back to the early 1900s.
"They're portrayed as taller than the men," she said. "They're portrayed as bigger, heavier set than small men. And so they use all of these visual imagery to suggest that the women are taking a man's role. And so there are all these ways in which that plays to a public that sees that as absurd."
But people still give the tradition their own meaning. One NPR listener in Austin, Texas, told us what she did with her boyfriend on the last Leap Day in 2020.
"I got down on my knee and I had a flower and I proposed to him with the flower," she said. "And I gave him this long speech of why we were meant to be together forever."
Another Leap Day approaches and they're still married.
