Happy new year, everyone. The calendar says it is 2023. From the perspective of our orbit about the Sun – the solar year – we are still several hours from that mark.
Earth takes 365.25 Gregorian calendar days to make one orbit about the Sun. As a result, every fourth year we have quietly added one solar day too many to our year, but not our calendar. Thus we must leap (add) a day at the end of February to get back on track. (2024 is the next “leap year” as a result) If we did not, the seasons would slowly drift around the calendar.
The new solar year does not begin until something like 4pm Eastern Standard Time today.
I feel like this buys me just a little extra time to reflect on the year that was: a year of change, a year of joy, a year of movement. No year is perfect. 2022 was pretty darn good.
