Tomorrow is a legal holiday. But is it Washington’s Birthday, Washington-Lincoln Day, Shrove Tuesday Eve or, as the advertisements tell us, “Presidents Day”?
That depends. Federal law states, “The following are legal public holidays … Washington’s Birthday, the third Monday in February.” Federal holidays are binding only on federal facilities, like the post office and the ranger station. States have their own official holidays, and Colorado provides that “The following days … the third Monday in February, commonly called Washington-Lincoln day … are hereby declared to be legal holidays.”
So legally, there is no Presidents Day in Colorado. It’s either Washington’s Birthday or Washington-Lincoln Day. One must wonder about our state law. It says “commonly called Washington-Lincoln day,” but it is not “commonly called” that. In fact, I’ve never heard it called that.
It’s a pity that we call it Presidents Day, because George Washington is a rarity in the history of the world. Name one other revolutionary leader who went on to hold his nation’s highest office, and then voluntarily relinquished power and returned to his pre-war civilian pursuits. It’s easy to think of revolutionary leaders – Oliver Cromwell, V.I. Lenin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Simon Bolivar – but difficult to find one who behaved like George Washington.
For that reason alone, we Americans ought to focus on Washington once a year. But America has departed from that, and there’s no getting rid of this Presidents Day nonsense.
We might get some good from it, though, by borrowing an idea from the U.S. Mint, which is issuing a series of $1 coins, four per year, with American presidents on the obverse side.
Presidents Day comes only once a year, though, so it couldn’t match the mint schedule. But we could have a the current president draw a predecessor’s name from a hat on the preceding year’s Presidents Day – and that’s the president who would be celebrated on the next one. For instance, if President Bush pulled out the name of James Buchanan (1857-61) tomorrow, then Buchanan would be the Presidents Day president for 2008, and our schoolchildren would have a year to learn about him, while advertising agencies could prepare for “Buchanan Bucks Bonanzas.”
Kids would rejoice at the drawing of an easy president like William Henry Harrison, who served less than a month, and groan if they had to cope with the dozen years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Public officials like mayors and governors would doubtless be expected to issue some remarks upon the president of the year, and they would either learn more of our nation’s history, or engage a history major to concoct a speech – and if there’s any group of college graduates who would benefit from a jobs program, it’s history majors.
But what if you are a conservative, and prefer to celebrate the traditional holiday in a traditional way? In that case, you should arrange for a public reading of Washington’s Farewell Address, as was the custom in the 19th century.
He urged Americans to “avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty,” and warned about how “The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.”
Come to think of it, it’s probably just as well that we don’t really celebrate Washington’s Birthday any more, for it would just interfere with the three-day weekend.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
