Monday, February 21, 2022, is President’s Day. Originally it was Washington’s birthday and moved to the third Monday in February. The move was part of a bill passed by Congress in 1968 called the “Uniform Monday Holiday Act.” to create three-day weekends. When it took effect in 1971, most federal holidays were moved to Monday and Columbus Day became a federal holiday. The exceptions were New Year’s, Christmas, July 4, and that late November football day, also known as Thanksgiving. Because of an uproar, Veteran’s Day, which had been moved to a Monday, was returned to the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
While officially a celebration of Washington’s birthday, after the bill took effect in 1971, it morphed into President’s Day, tearing down an American hero and replacing it with a meaningless day off work (for some). It became a bogus holiday.
It’s right to celebrate the presidents individually, sure, but not all 46 of them on the same day. We’re not celebrating any of them if we’re celebrating all of them. After all, we don’t celebrate the birthdays of all our siblings and parents on the same day, do we? Wouldn’t each feel slighted if none were given their special day?
Suggesting President’s Day is a bogus holiday isn’t about putting down a particular president. It’s tossing out wokeism and teaching an understanding of the country’s greatness.
Celebrating Presidents is an integral part of our civil “religion.” It is a critical way to keep us all together as a society, a way to give us a collective history to celebrate
The problem with President’s Day is that it homogenizes all the great deeds done by individual presidents into a meaningless amalgamation. We negate the critical historical achievements of the most remarkable people who held the chief executive’s office by celebrating all the presidents at once. Since they were both born in February, President’s day should be limited to two commanders-in-chief, the father of our country, George Washington (February 22), and the man who saved the union and freed the slaves, Abe Lincoln (February 12). This may get pushback from many southern states, as they refused to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday even in recent years. I suppose they never forgave him for winning the Civil War.
Like most liberal creations, President’s Day mixes the achievements of all our leaders into one giant mediocre soup.
By celebrating President’s Day, we are also saying that the worst presidents, such as Carter, and James Buchanan, racists like Woodrow Wilson, anti-Semites like Obama, or do-nothings like Franklin Pierce should be honored the same as our great leaders such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan.
Take George Washington. These days, George Washington has been relegated to that “truth-telling cherry tree guy” we see on the one-dollar bill and on TV commercials at the end of February. And he’s lumped in with the others on President’s Day. And that is a shame, indeed, for, without George Washington, our presidency, certainly our very nation might have become a far different and lesser nation. For example, Washington was the first national leader who gave up power voluntarily. After two terms, many wanted him to run again, but he said no and went home. There is so much more that made Washington great.
Today the people are quick to call Presidents great communicators, and some of them are— Reagan, for example. But no other American President could have said so much with so few words as Abraham Lincoln. One of his most memorable speeches, The Gettysburg Address, was only 271 words.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
It’s nice to honor the people who served this country as President; however, Lincoln and Washington deserve their own holiday. A day when all 50 states (all 57 according to a former president) should be wishing a belated Happy birthday to Lincoln and a Happy birthday to Washington. They deserve a day of their own.
{Reposted from The Lid}
