Right date, wrong day.

Today, my desk cal­en­dar says “Pres­i­dents’ Day”.

As a for­mer Eng­lish major and part-​​time gram­mar Nazi (there, I got to Godwin’s Law in the sec­ond sen­tence), I spend a lot of time pon­der­ing whether the apos­tro­phe is mis­placed, or whether it needs an apos­tro­phe at all. No mat­ter what, though, it’s wrong.

Many of my friends on the Right are offended by the very con­cept of a Pres­i­dents’ Day hol­i­day. For exam­ple, just a year ago colum­nist Mark Lands­baum of the Orange County Reg­is­ter (tagline: “defend­ing your rights”) wrote a polemic on the idea of hon­or­ing Pres­i­dents in the plural. His point, and I’d agree with him, is that not all Pres­i­dents are wor­thy of a Fed­eral hol­i­day. I’m not sure we need a hol­i­day devoted even in small mea­sure to William Henry Har­ri­son, for example.

Our friends over at the New Repub­lic picked up on the Lands­baum col­umn and ran with it as an excuse to slam Pres­i­dents Carter, Obama, Grant and Hoover. For exam­ple, some­one who calls him­self “Ver­ge­nius Rufus” wrote:

Richard Nixon called it “Pres­i­dents Day” to include Lin­coln, I think, although Lincoln’s birth­day had never been a fed­eral hol­i­day, only a state hol­i­day in some states. After that it some­how turned into a day to honor all of the Pres­i­dents includ­ing the scoundrels and incom­pe­tents among them.

The prob­lem is there’s no truth to any of this remem­bered “his­tory”. It’s another meme I see pop­ping up from time to time.

It’s MY day, dammit.

The anniver­sary of George Washington’s birth­day, Feb­ru­ary 22, 1732, was first cel­e­brated at the Fed­eral level on the cen­te­nary of his birth, in 1832. That year, Con­gress adjourned in honor of his birth­day. On Feb­ru­ary 22, 1862, Con­gress began the tra­di­tion of read­ing Washington’s Farewell Address in the Sen­ate on the anniver­sary of his birth, a tra­di­tion that con­tin­ues to this day.

Washington’s Birth­day became a Fed­eral hol­i­day by act of Con­gress in 1879.

That sit­u­a­tion remained until 1968, when Con­gress began the process of con­sol­i­dat­ing Fed­eral hol­i­days to fall on Mon­days and form three-​​day week­ends as much as pos­si­ble. On June 28, 1968, Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son signed into law an act of Con­gress, the Uni­form Mon­day Hol­i­day Act (Pub­lic Law 90–363, for­merly H.R. 15951). The new law took effect on Jan­u­ary 1, 1971. Accord­ing to the Act, four Fed­eral hol­i­days — Washington’s Birth­day, for­merly Feb­ru­ary 22; Memo­r­ial Day, for­merly May 30; Colum­bus Day, for­merly Octo­ber 12; and Vet­er­ans’ Day, for­merly Armistice Day or Remem­brance Day, cel­e­brat­ing the armistice end­ing World War I on Novem­ber 11, 1918 — were all moved to Mon­days. (Vet­er­ans’ Day, which had been the fourth Mon­day in Octo­ber, was returned to Novem­ber 11 in 1978.) New Year’s Day on Jan­u­ary 1, Inde­pen­dence Day on July 4, Labor Day on the first Mon­day in Sep­tem­ber and Christ­mas Day on Decem­ber 25 were left on their orig­i­nal, tra­di­tional dates. Thanks­giv­ing Day was left at the fourth Thurs­day in Novem­ber, thereby mak­ing both Black Fri­day and Cyber Mon­day pos­si­ble. Oh, our pre­scient Congress.

Iron­i­cally, since the new Feb­ru­ary Fed­eral hol­i­day was des­ig­nated on the third Mon­day in Feb­ru­ary, it shifts among the days between Feb­ru­ary 15 and Feb­ru­ary 21 but can never fall on Washington’s actual birthday.

Dur­ing debate on the bill, there was some dis­cus­sion of incor­po­rat­ing cel­e­bra­tions of Lincoln’s Birth­day (Feb­ru­ary 12, 1809) and Washington’s Birth­day into a new Feb­ru­ary hol­i­day styled “Pres­i­dents’ Day” but the offi­cial name, accord­ing to the Uni­form Mon­day Hol­i­day Act, remains “Washington’s Birth­day”. Just because cal­en­dar mak­ers and fur­ni­ture stores try to make it oth­er­wise doesn’t change Congress’s intent, nor is it evi­dence for a Vast Left-​​Wing Con­spir­acy. Sorry, Freepers.

Related arti­cles