The Origin of President’s Day

I started asking myself, why do we celebrate President's Day?  Did we just mush Washington and Lincoln's birthday into one holiday?  Are we supposed to celebrate all the Presidents?  What is it?  I started doing a little research because apparently as you get older your forget certain things you learned as a child.

The holiday was  a celebration of George Washington's birthday and was literally celebrated on February 22nd his actual birthday.  It was made a federal holiday in 1885.

So apparently back in the day Washington and Lincoln's birthdays were celebrated on their birthdays, February 22nd and February 12th, respectively.

Can you imagine two days off in February, how awesome!  Well in 1968 somebody got the great idea to move a lot of the federal holidays to Mondays.  You know how we love our three day weekends.  The Uniform Holiday Act was passed in 1968 and enacted in 1971 thus moving President's Day to the third Monday in February.  This is the bill that also moved Memorial Day, Columbus Day and Veteran's Day to Mondays.

So President's Day has kind of become a hodgepodge of a holiday.  So celebrate it how you want to say Happy Birthday to Washington, celebrate honest Abe's day or say thanks to all the past and present Presidents.

So hopefully you have the day off and are celebrating accordingly.  If you don't have the day off, then keep on perusing the Mix 94.1 website and rebelling against your work for making you come in on a federal holiday.

Happy President's Day.