It’s Washington’s Birthday
There is no such thing as Presidents’ Day. It is a made up holiday started by businesses to get you to buy stuff! God knows we can’t have too many sales.
Today is a federal holiday. Our popular culture and even the law in some states now refer to the holiday as “Presidents Day.”
I don't care what that mattress sale ad says – there is no such thing as a national Presidents’ Day. It’s a myth.
Yes, there is a federal day off on Feb. 16th of this year, but its official name is “Washington’s Birthday.” We’re supposed to celebrate the life and legacy of the Father of Our Country.
Washington’s Birthday has been a federal holiday since 1885. For more than 80 years it was celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, Feb. 22.
Today, our popular culture and even the law in some states now refer to the holiday as “Presidents Day.”
This is wrong as a matter of law and history: The holiday is still Washington’s birthday.
A small number of states, including Illinois, observe Lincoln’s birthday as a public holiday, according to the Library of Congress. And some commemorate both Lincoln and Washington on Presidents Day.
But on the federal level, the day is still officially Washington’s Birthday.
The Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect in 1971, moving Presidents Day to the third Monday in February. Sales campaigns soared, historian C. L. Arbelbide wrote in Prologue.
Bruggeman said Washington and the other Founding Fathers “would have been deeply worried” by how the holiday became taken over by commercial and private interests.
“They were very nervous about corporations,” Bruggeman said. “It wasn’t that they forbade them. But they saw corporations as like little republics that potentially threatened the power of The Republic.”
But then something weird happened in 1968. The U.S. Congress bowed to dual pressures from workers wanting more 3-day weekends, and retailers wanting more holidays sales events. Washington’s Birthday would now be celebrated on a variable Monday in February: on or before the 22nd, based on when it was convenient in any given calendar year.
Popular sentiment leaned toward renaming it “Presidents’ Day”, to expand it to include all the presidents. But Congress rejected the name change. Of course that mattered not one whit to a public that liked the new name, and so it’s been mis-labeled as Presidents’ Day ever since, though never legally changed.
In my mind we have had enough mediocre Presidents that don’t need to be celebrated. I’m sticking with Washington’s Birthday.
So please stop calling it Presidents’ Day, and think about taking a history class. It’s always good to know the truth.
*As a side note, I used quotes and bits from a bunch of articles to write this. I should have kept track so I could credit my sources. Sorry about that.
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I have just finished reading a wonderful book. About The Carleton Sisters, by Dian Greenwood. I met Dian at someone else’s book reading last year and picked up her first novel. I am blown away by this book.
You know that feeling when you get to the end of a book and it doesn’t end the way you thought it would, but the ending turns out to be better and more appropriate than what was in your mind? That is this book. The ending makes total sense and when you put it down and think about it, it does have the right ending.
Dian really gets inside her characters heads, and bounces between all of the sister’s lives and relationships effortlessly. Some chapters are about a single sister, but often times she has them together, along with their mother and their interactions feel so real. And sad. I can see each sister in my head and although they are from the same family, their lives turned out so different. They are all longing for something, and so much of it has to do with their absent father. I found myself rooting for each one of them and hoping they would get their shit together.
Dian captures life in their small town. This town is in Central California, a place I have been driven through many times. Her physical descriptions of the town and the way things revolve around the regular trains passing through feels so real. If you want to drive to a certain place you need to go either before or after one of the trains goes by otherwise you’ll be sitting at the crossing for a very long time.
We dig deep into the characters lives, their hopes, and their failed dreams. In flashback you see the closeness that they once shared but once their father leaves it all becomes so different, so quickly. Over the years they have all come to certain conclusions about their parents. Those conclusions eventually get turned on their heads.
There is so much going on in this book, and it gets more fascinating as the book develops. It’s a wonderful book and if you have the opportunity, pick it up. Dian Greenwood is an independent author and I love supporting the independents. Grab this book. You won’t be disappointed.
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Here is a clip of me reading Incident At Arrah Wanna, about the time I got busted for drugs when I was fourteen, at church camp. Yeah, I have never been a role model...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLEjFvSeh_A
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