President's Day 2009

Until 1971 there were holidays in February honoring two of our most legendary and most written about Presidents: Washington and Lincoln. This all ended when Richard Nixon declared one single federal public holiday. It is observed on the 3rd Monday of February in honor of all past presidents of the United States of America.

When I was attending elementary school the two holidays broke up an otherwise dreary month. They fell on odd days, not just Mondays, and gave us all a respite from the grind. I think the teachers even enjoyed them.

Now with most families needing to send both parents out to work in order to pay the bills, the Monday holiday is the compromise solution. Can you imagine if parents had to juggle their schedules every February so someone would be around to watch the kids who had been given two holidays by their school system? There would be a mutiny and most kids would probably end up at school anyway in some sort of mass day care program.

The offshoot of the one holiday, I believe, is that we spend less time considering our history, and the courage which both Washington and Lincoln had to display as leaders of our country. They were not perfect men but they did rise to the occasion and made critical decisions which shaped our current nation. When we lump all the Presidents together we tend to not make a distinction between the bad and the good ones, the ones who acted timidly and the ones who showed the mettle they were made of.

I know we will never go back to two holidays in February but I do fondly recall the whimsy it provided our schedules. If a snow day occurred somewhere in the middle of the holidays it made the entire month fly by, and then spring would be right around the corner.