Today, the third Monday of February, we celebrate Presidents’ Day. While the title suggests that the day is dedicated to honoring all U.S. presidents, the day actually was formed to honor the birthdays of the first president, George Washington, and a very celebrated president, Abraham Lincoln.
The holiday now known as Presidents’ Day first started around 1800.
George Washington died in 1799. After his death, his birthday, which was February 22, became a day to honor and celebrate him. He was viewed as the most important American figure at the time and was honored as such with a day dedicated to celebrating him. Eventually, further honors came in the form of the Washington Monument being built and the 1832 centennial celebration of his birth. However, his birthday celebration was an unofficial holiday up to this point. It was not until the late 1870s that his birthday became a federal holiday. The formal holiday was proposed by a senator from Arkansas and signed into law in 1879 by the president at the time, Rutherford B. Hayes. The holiday was first only celebrated formally in Washington D.C. but then became a nationwide holiday in 1885.
In the late 1960s, Washington’s birthday celebration began shifting to Presidents’ Day.
At this time, Congress proposed a bill known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. This bill is one that is credited with forming many of the holidays we now celebrate as guaranteed Monday holidays, rather than date specific celebrations. This was done in order to create more three-day weekends for workers and done to help reduce employee absenteeism. This bill also included the combination of Washington’s birthday celebrations and Lincoln’s birthday. Lincoln’s birthday was on February 12 and also was a state holiday in several states and unofficial U.S. holiday.
A senator from Illinois, Robert McClory, was the main champion for the holiday combination.
McClory is the one who suggested naming this combination holiday Presidents’ Day and using the day as a means to celebrate presidents as a whole, not just Washington and Lincoln. This was originally a controversial idea and was even dropped for a time after leaders from Virginia fought against it as they felt Washington deserved his own day still. However, despite the name change failing at the time, Washington’s birthday officially shifted to the third Monday in February after Richard Nixon made an executive order in 1971.
The holiday was still Washington’s Birthday at first, but overtime became recognized as Presidents’ Day. The day shift led many to connect the day with Lincoln’s birthday as well, which led many to begin to refer to the day as Presidents’ Day. By the early 2000s, the name was officially changed to Presidents’ Day after many states already recognized the day as Presidents’ Day.
