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Tomorrow is a legal holiday. But is it Washington's
Birthday, Washington-Lincoln Day, Shrove Tuesday Eve or, as
the advertisements tell us, Presidents' Day
?
That depends. Federal law states that The following
are legal public holidays ... Washington's Birthday, the
third Monday in February.
Federal holidays are binding
only on federal facilities, like the post office and the
ranger station.
States have their own official holidays, and Colorado
provides that The following days ... the third Monday in
February, commonly called Washington-Lincoln day ... are
hereby declared to be legal holidays.
So legally, there is no Presidents' Day in Colorado.
It's either Washington's Birthday or Washington-Lincoln
Day. One must wonder about our state law. It says
commonly called Washington-Lincoln day,
but it is
not commonly called
that. In fact, I've never heard
it called that.
It is commonly called Presidents' Day
or some
variation thereof -- the placement, or even the existence,
of the apostrophe is rather haphazard. That's a pity,
because George Washington is a rarity in the history of the
world.
Name one other revolutionary leader who went on to hold his nation's highest office, and then voluntarily relinquished power and returned to his pre-war civilian pursuits. It's easy to think of revolutionary leaders -- Oliver Cromwell, V.I. Lenin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Simon Bolivar -- but difficult to find one who behaved like George Washington.
For that reason alone, we Americans ought to focus on Washington once a year. But America has departed from that, and there's no getting rid of this Presidents' Day nonsense.
We might get some good from it, though, by borrowing an idea from the U.S. Mint, which is issuing a series of $1 coins, four per year, with American presidents on the obverse side. The mint series is in chronological order, starting this year with the first four presidents: Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Presidents' Day comes only once a year, though, so it couldn't match the mint schedule. But we could have a the current President draw a predecessor's name from a hat on the preceding year's President's Day -- and that's the president who would be celebrated on the next one.
For instance, if President Bush pulled out the name of
James Buchanan (1857-61) tomorrow, then Buchanan would be
the Presidents' Day President for 2008, and our
schoolchildren would have a year to learn about him, while
advertising agencies could prepare for Buchanan Bucks
Bonanzas.
Kids would rejoice at the drawing of an easy president like William Henry Harrison, who served less than a month, and groan if they had to cope with the dozen years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Public officials like mayors and governors would doubtless be expected to issue some remarks upon the President of the Year, and they would either learn more of our nation's history, or engage a history major to concoct a speech -- and if there's any group of college graduates who would benefit from a jobs program, it's history majors.
But what if you are a conservative, and prefer to celebrate the traditional holiday in a traditional way? In that case, you should arrange for a public reading of Washington's Farewell Address, as was the custom in the 19th century.
He urged Americans to avoid the necessity of those
overgrown military establishments, which under any form of
government are inauspicious to liberty,
and warned
about how The spirit of encroachment tends to
consolidate the powers of
all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
Come to think of it, it's probably just as well that we don't really celebrate Washington's Birthday any more, for it would just interfere with the three-day weekend.
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