Happy Birthday, Mr. President

By Paul Roberts

Ah, President’s Day.

Or is it Presidents Day? Or Presidents’ Day?

Hang on…I’m sure I have childhood memories about celebrating Washington’s birthday in elementary school. And I can smell the cherry pie that Carol just took out of the oven. Isn’t today supposed to be about him?

I cannot tell a lie. This holiday means so little to me, now that I am out of the workforce. If I was still teaching, I’d be relishing the day off, and perhaps planning some activities to help students ponder the importance and meaning of such a day. But today, unless I take the time to make it important, it really is just like any other day. And if I decided to make it into something important, to observe it somehow, how would I choose to do that? Read about President’s Day? Do something seemingly patriotic? Eat fresh baked cherry pie?

Well, first of all, the cherry pie is for the Woolum family dinner tonight. I think it is purely accidental that we’re eating it today.

Secondly, I cannot tell a lie…I’m not really very patriotic. I mean, I love hearing an awesome rendition of the national anthem, I can be stirred by images of the Statue of Liberty, and I am easily moved to tears hearing Taps being played at a memorial service for a veteran. But I sometimes recoil at what seems to be overt, overblown “patriotism” that appears to exist purely for the sake of showing our superiority over other nations and cultures.

I guess I could read about President’s Day. Give me a minute. I’ll be right back.

Oh my gosh! Thirty years of teaching English in the public school system and I never took advantage of the punctuation conundrum that is the federal holiday on the third Monday in February! President’s Day, Presidents Day, Presidents’ Day, they are all correct! It just depends on which state you live in and what you are trying to celebrate. For those that are curious, Idaho uses the “President’s Day designation.

The federal holiday, technically, is still Washington’s birthday, but in reverence to our first president and the freedom and independence he fought for, the feds allow the individual states to call it whatever they want. However, having thrown the states that particular bone, in 1971 our federal government passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, changing the observance from Washington’s actual birthday to the third Monday in February. 

I’m pretty sure there were many elementary school students that year who were shocked to get the quiz question “When is George Washington’s birthday?” marked incorrect when they answered “February 22nd” instead of “the third Monday in February.

Of course, being the overachiever that I was, I asked my teacher to clarify the question: “Are you referring to the Julian or Gregorian calendar? The colonies were following the Julian calendar when George was born, thus making his actual birth date February 11th.”

And now, I’m headed to the kitchen to sneak a slice of fresh cherry pie.

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Do you have any President’s Day/George Washington/Abraham Lincoln memories? Traditions?

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