President's Day

In looking through the local newspaper, one could easily conclude that the modern holiday was created by merchants, just so they could hold their annual Presidents' Day sales. Depending on your perspective or what part of the country you're from, Presidents' Day is intended to honor George Washington, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, or all the American presidents. So what is Presidents' Day and how did it come about?

According to the "new style" calendar George Washington was born on February 22, 1732. Along came Abraham Lincoln, another famous US president, who was also deserving of a special day of recognition. Prior to 1968, February 22nd was observed as a federal public holiday to honor the birthday of George Washington and February 12th was observed as a public holiday (in most states) to honor the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

Follow up:

Then things changed. In 1968, the 90th Congress was determined to create a uniform system of federal Monday holidays, so they voted to shift three existing holidays (including Washington's Birthday) to Mondays. The law took effect in 1971. As a result, Washington's Birthday holiday was changed from its fixed February 22 date to the third Monday in February.

However, while Congress had created a uniform federal holiday law, there was not a uniform holiday title agreement among the individual states. Even though most states with individual holidays honoring Washington and Lincoln shifted their state recognition date of Washington's Birthday to correspond to the third Monday in February, some states, including California, Idaho, Tennessee, Texas and others, chose not to retain the federal holiday title and renamed their state holiday "President's Day."

From that point forward, the growing use of the term Presidents' Day was largely a marketing phenomenon, as advertisers sought a catchall phrase to capitalize on the opportunity for three-day or weeklong sales. Gradually, the phrase "Presidents' Day" took hold and today has become part of the everyday vernacular.