I got the following email today:

“…It is also Sadie Hawkins Day
On February 29 it is acceptable for a woman to propose marriage to a man. If the man refuses, he must give her a gift.”

I DO like the idea of getting a present today…

I did a search and found the following article with a more detailed description of this tradition:

“Leap Year Proposal

The right of every women to propose on 29th February each leap year, goes back many hundreds of years to when the leap year day had no recognition in English law (the day was ‘lept over’ and ignored, hence the term ‘leap year’).

It was considered, therefore, that as the day had no legal status, it was reasonable to assume that traditions also had no status.

Consequently, women who were concerned about being ‘left on the shelf’ took advantage of this anomaly and proposed to the man they wished to marry.

It was also thought that since the leap year day corrected the discrepancy between the calendar year of 365 days and the time taken for the Earth to complete one orbit of the sun (365 days and 6 hours), it was an opportunity for women to correct a tradition that was one-sided and unjust.”

Click here for a Yahoo! Answers thread asking any women if they have proposed today…so far we’ve got 1 tally for someone that wanted a present, and 1 for a girl that proposed and got an acceptance. Will update the tally later today.