'Til death do us part: The stuffy Leap Year tradition that should be relegated to the past
A collection of Victorian memorabilia includes a card especially designed for single ladies on leap years. It has a needle and thread and two buttons on it and reads: ‘To a Bachelor. Here’s a threaded needle and a pair of buttons. Being Leap Year allows me the privilege of asking you whether you would not like someone to sew them on for you?’
The card is emblematic of a 19th Century tradition – allowing women to propose marriage to men on this day – and puts the practice into perspective and hopefully where it belongs, in the dustbin of history.
I’m all for romance, but surely the time has come to ditch this absurd tradition.
As if women in the 21st century need a specially designated day, and only once every four years at that, to let a man know they want to marry them.
The whole idea is as dated as chastity belts, and about as appealing. And how curious that a concept, probably dreamed up by men, restricts a woman’s right to ask the question on only one day in every four years. What about the other 1,422 days?
Are we supposed to sit around like wilting violets for all but one day in four years waiting for our Prince to get down on bended knee.
And yet a recent survey shows that almost half of single women would use this day to propose to their partners. Get a life girls.
Three-quarters of British men living in the 21st century say they would have no problems with their woman popping the question on any day of any year.
Which is just as well, as often as not it’s the woman who has to raise the issue of marriage anyway.
The concept of a Leap Year proposal is quaint, but it’s antiquated. Any self-respecting modern woman would leap right over it. And get him to sew his own buttons on.