By George, IT IS Washington’s Birthday!

By historian C. L. Arbelbide in the quarterly publication of the National Archives, Prologue, an article on the history of the Washington’s Birthday holiday. The article corrects some of the Internet folklore about the holiday (including that posted here last year). A few excerpts:

In the late 1870s, Senator Steven Wallace Dorsey (R-Arkansas) proposed the unprecedented idea of adding “citizen” Washington’s birth date, February 22, to the four existing bank holidays previously approved in 1870.

Originally federal worker absenteeism had forced Congress to take a cue from surrounding states and formally declare New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day as federal holidays in the District of Columbia.

The idea of adding Washington’s Birthday to the federal holiday list simply made official an unofficial celebration in existence long before Washington’s death. A popular proposal, the holiday bill required little debate. Signed into law January 31, 1879, by President Rutherford B. Hayes, the law was implemented in 1880 and applied only to District federal workers. In 1885 the holiday was extended to federal workers in the thirty-eight states.

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Although storm clouds were gathering around the idea of shifting Veterans Day from one month to another, it was the proposal to shift the Washington’s Birthday federal holiday from February 22 to the third Monday in February that caused both a congressional and public outcry. That Washington’s identity would be lost forced McClory to insist, “We are not changing George Washington’s birthday” and further note, “We would make George Washington’s Birthday more meaningful to many more people by having it observed on a Monday.”

Opponents were not convinced. It had been McClory—a representative from “the land of Lincoln”—who had attempted in committee to rename “Washington’s Birthday” as “President’s Day.” The bill stalled. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 27 [1968]: “To win more support, Mr. McClory and his allies dropped the earlier goal of renaming Washington’s Birthday [as] Presidents’ Day, [which] mollified some Virginia lawmakers. He also agreed to sweeten the package by including Columbus Day as a Federal holiday, a goal sought for years by Italian-American groups.”

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Had the name of the holiday been changed to Presidents’ Day, McClory would have gained instant federal holiday recognition for Illinois native son Abraham Lincoln. With the name change no longer a possibility, McClory positioned the federal holiday on the third Monday in February—a date closer to Lincoln’s February 12 birth date, knowing the dual presidential birthday spotlight could be shared by Lincoln.

McClory went so far as to suggest a direct link between the February 22 birth date and the third Monday existed: “Indeed, his [Washington’s] birthday will be celebrated frequently on February 22, which in many cases will be the third Monday in February. It will also be celebrated on February 23, just as it is at the present time when February 22 falls on the Sunday preceding.”

Virginia representatives Richard Harding Poff and William Lloyd Scott—believing that removing the direct date removed the heritage the date represented—countered the inaccurate information. Poff declared, “Now what that really means is never again will the birthday of the Father of our Country be observed on February 22 because the third Monday will always fall between the 15th of February and the 21st of February.” Poff proposed an amendment to retain the February 22 date. …

Knowing that future generations were caretakers of the past, Dan Heflin Kuykendall (R-Tennessee) cut to the heart of the matter. “If we do this, 10 years from now our schoolchildren will not know or care when George Washington was born. They will know that in the middle of February they will have a 3-day weekend for some reason. This will come.”

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Then there was the response by state governments. While Congress could create a uniform federal holiday law, there would not be a uniform holiday title agreement among the states. While a majority of 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, a few states chose not to retain the federal holiday title, including Texas, which by 1971 renamed their state holiday “President’s Day.”

Crossing state borders on Washington’s Birthday could lead to holiday title confusion. Then came the power of advertising.

For advertisers, the Monday holiday change was the goose that laid the golden “promotional” egg. Using Labor Day marketing as a guide, three-day weekend sales were expanded to include the new Monday holidays. Once the “Uniform Monday Holiday Law” was implemented, it took just under a decade to build a head of national promotional sales steam.

Local advertisers morphed both “Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday” and “George Washington’s Birthday” into the sales sound bite “President’s Day,” expanding the traditional three-day sales to begin before Lincoln’s birth date and end after Washington’s February 22 birth.