On calendars, it's Presidents' Day, or without an apostrophe: Presidents' Day. To the federal government, It's Washington's birthday. But California really gets festive. California lists the holiday as “The Third Monday in February.”
Banks, schools and non-essential government offices are closed. Most of us have the day off. But does anyone really celebrate this occasion that has more than a dozen different names, depending on what state you're in?
Mostlyan anti-woke resource site for patriotic families, encourages kids to use their Monday off to bake presidential treats, like Zachary Taylor's Donuts and Grover Cleveland's Snickerdoodles. The site also proposes that children sing the presidential anthem.
Hail the Chief, as we pledge cooperation / In the proud fulfillment of a great and noble calling!
That's a lyric that few can achieve. In an era when many of us vow not to collaborate with the president but to frustrate him at every turn, “Hail to the Boss” is no longer a slap in the face. Or even looks like it belongs on the playlist.
Celebrating every president in one gulp all day is impractical, no matter what your politics. In fact, the transformation of Washington's birthday into Presidents' Day appears to have completely emptied the holiday's meaning, making it more synonymous with selling mattresses than with the 45 men who happened to serve, for better or worse, as chief executive. of the nation for the last 235 years.
The reason for the holiday is that George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, about 300 years ago. Washington, of course, is the father of our country, a patriarch squared. He also, of course, an enslaver and usurper of native lands. He personally held 123 humans in captivity at the time of his death.
He was a general and statesman. After leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, Washington oversaw the writing of the Constitution, established the federal government, and served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797.
He's a guy to behold. He fulfilled the commitments of the Declaration of Independence, which rejected monarchy and held that all men are created equal. Then the Constitution, which he signed, abandoned the question of equality and ennobled property rights, counting some humans as chattel.
One way to spend the holidays might be to discuss Washington's bifurcated legacy. Or maybe just text someone about it? And of course, fritters.
Like Shakespeare, who was not revered as the English GOAT until about 150 years After his death, Washington was not immediately considered the complete American GOAT. In 1869, his face was engraved on the one dollar bill. In 1879, his birthday became a national holiday. In 1884, Washington Monument completed.
All of this followed the Civil War. Therefore, as we celebrate Washington, we remember not only the founding of the nation, but also its refounding. We are reviewing the creation of national myths that were to reunite the Union after its destruction.
After all, Washington was a Southerner, a son of Virginia, where the Confederacy was based. Canonizing him just after the Civil War, with a monument designed by Robert Mills of South Carolina, can be seen as an effort to assure the broken nation that America did not belong only to the abolitionists and industrialists, who had so recently been victorious in war. Southern farmers also made the nation.
But in the 1870s, another dead folk hero, much different and much more controversial, hit the charts just as Washington was receiving his dollars.
In 1873 or 1874, Julius Francis, a pharmacist in Buffalo, New York, began celebrating Abraham Lincoln's birthday on February 12. He petitioned Congress to make it a federal holiday, but today only California, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri and New York officially observe it as an independent holiday. (In California, it mostly equals closed courtrooms.) Four other states join Lincoln with Washington in an event celebrated on the third Monday in February, calling the occasion Washington-Lincoln Day (Colorado, Ohio), Washington and Lincoln Birthday (Minnesota), and Washington and Lincoln Day (Utah). .
black history monthwhich is celebrated in February, also has its origins in the 19th century celebrations of Lincoln's birthday on the 12th, and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass's birthday on the 14th.
In one year, 1939, Washington's birthday was claimed by American Nazis, who held a “true Americanism” event in New York City on February 20 that featured an image of the first president flanked by swastikas and the stars and stripes.
Several stubborn states go their own way in February. Alabama leaves out Lincoln and gives the third Monday to Washington and fellow Southerner Thomas Jefferson, even though Jefferson was born in April. nine states They don't have it on their official calendars, including Florida, North Carolina, and Kentucky (where Lincoln was born).
Most people, however, know the day as Presidents' Day, with or without the apostrophe, which seems to wander aimlessly. One way or another, you can cheers for Washington and/or Lincoln, or for each president on the placemat.
But even taking into account apostrophe confusion syndrome, which plagues many holidays, we're really mainly talking about the big kind.
And they're not Millard Filmore, Franklin Pierce or John Tyler. It's not who you'll vote for in November.
It's Washington.
Still, the man himself ordered the Americans “to protect against the impostures of pretended patriotism”, so be careful with powdered wigs.
And then there is Washington's memorable description of a bad bed: “a straw, joined [and] a Thread Bear blanket with double its weight on vermin such as lice and fleas, etc.
After all, a new mattress might be the best way to celebrate.
Virginia Heffernan is a regular contributor to Wired and writes a newsletter, Magic and Loss, at virginiaheffernan.substack.com.
