Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Leap Year Postcards



Leap Year usually occurs every four years. An extra day, February 29, is added to the calendar during Leap Years to correct for the fact that a year is not exactly 365 days.Traditionally Leap Year was a time when women were allowed to propose marriage to men instead of waiting for men too propose to them.

Most Leap Year postcards were published during the years of the early twentieth century postcard craze for the leap years of 1904, 1908, and 1912. Most of these postcards were comical in nature. The postcard above, from 1904, is the only Leap Year card in my collection. This postcard was signed by Arthur Gill and published by Tuck.

More information and examples of Leap Year postcards:

Vintage Leap Year Postcards

“Get a Hustle On—It’s Leap Year”

Donald McGill postcards that warned men about women proposing


2 comments:

  1. Nice to have one, they must be quite rare.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So, do you have any idea why there was such an association between leap year and marriage proposals?

    ReplyDelete