In a post-divorce daze, you might back have looked and thought, ” It can’ve exercised, it had been simply the timing that has been all incorrect.

Year” Were you and your ex married during a leap? You might have now been onto one thing.

Greek and Ukrainian folklore shows that partners that marry within a jump year have actually misfortune.

Leap years had been designed by Julius Caesar within the century that is first to be able to sync the calendar aided by the periods. Pope Gregory XIII later perfected the machine in 1582, forming the Gregorian calendar utilized today. The revised calendar was accompanied by a brand new set of superstitions, Neni Panourgia, an associate professor at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, told The Huffington Post for the Greek and Romans.

“Both had superstitions regarding beginning any such thing brand new on a jump year. It had been not merely engaged and getting married, but baptizing a kid, getting into any type of contractual relationship, selling or buying, beginning a journey and even a job that is new” stated Panourgia, whose 1995 guide, “Fragments of Death, Fables of Identity: An Athenian Anthropography,” details Greek jump 12 months superstitions.

The aspect that is only of Greek superstition that caribbeancupid still continues to be today, said Panourgia, could be the belief that leap year marriages and engagements are difficulty that may just end up in two kinds of individual catastrophes: “The implication being either a breakup or among the spouse’s death.”

But does the superstition hold any fat for contemporary Greeks?

Panourgia acknowledges casual, non-scientific newsprint polls that recommend continuing belief, however in the lack of scientific tests, she continues to be skeptical.

“People will concur with lots of things they recognize to be element of folklore, but that doesn’t indicate that if push comes to shove — if choices on wedding have to be taken — they will not be taken by partners.”

Nevertheless, each time a divorce proceedings occurs, the jump 12 months produces a culprit that is good “People could actually state one thing moved incorrect or might get wrong exactly as it’s a jump 12 months,” Panourgia stated.

Leap Day is regarded as similarly unlucky for wedding in Ukraine, where each day of the season posseses an assigned saint. Feb. 29 occurs to boast a especially bad saint known as Cassian, stated Natalie Kononenko, a professor and Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography at the University of Alberta.

In accordance with Kononenko, legend has it that Cassian declined to assist a peasant whoever cart ended up being stuck when you look at the mud, and St. Nicholas found their aid rather, prompting Jesus to grant St. Nicholas two saint’s times per 12 months, while limiting Cassian to a measly one every four years. The professor explained in an e-mail to The Huffington Post since then, a vengeful Cassian has brought sickness to people and cattle with a single gaze. It really is small shock, then, that whenever Feb. 29 rolls around, Ukrainians are urged to remain indoors, keep animals inside and . refrain from marrying?

As Kononenko stated, “no body in the or her mind that is right would hitched on February 29 considering the belief.”