Some say that traditions of gender role reversals in a leap year date back to the time, 2000 years ago, when the leap year was adopted by Julius Caesar. Why an extra day in the year should turn the world on its axis is probably lost to the mists of time, but in the olden days of McLean County, people were happy to celebrate the tradition. Ladies threw parties for which they invited the men, called for the men at their homes to bring them to the party and generally acted the male role. In 1888 the ladies of Leroy decided to have an elegant supper to celebrate the Leap Year, as was customary. The Pantagraph said that the ladies were quite competitive about their party and wanted to have the best of those in the area.
The ladies prepared an elegant supper and served it at the Leroy opera house. The attendees enjoyed musical entertainment and some recitations. During the party prizes were awarded for the best sawyer -- among the women, and the best stitcher among the men. The level of hilarity in the opera house must have been deafening! The women trying to do the -- possibly -- unaccustomed work of sawing and the men trying to do the doubtlessly unfamiliar work of sewing (unless there was a doctor among the contestants.) I'm afraid that many of those ladies were probably more familiar with a saw than they might like to allow, but of course their clothing would be an impediment to sawing.
In 1880 the standards had been set by a group of Bloomington young ladies entertaining their gentlemen acquaintances for Leap Year. At the party the ladies paid the men all those little flattering attentions that please and catered to their needs for punch and cake. The young men took special care with their toilettes and fashioned their gowns from legal pleadings, cancelled notes, wall paper, newspaper and pension papers.
It should be refreshing to us to know that having such a reversal of roles at a Leap Year party could be quite meaningless in 2016. In this day and age perhaps many men are as inept at sawing as at sewing and many women would be as well, thanks to our highly specialized occupations and lack of handicraft skills. But if a woman was good at sawing, or a man at sewing, it should not be at all surprising, since personal choices in hobbies and occupations are wider today than over 100 years ago.