The third Monday of February is a federal holiday whose legal name is Washington’s Birthday. It’s been that since it was established and the 1968 act that moved it to a Monday didn’t change it.
Almost nobody calls it that. Retailers started using Presidents Day, states adopted their own variations, and the popular name won completely while the legal one sat there unchanged.
So we have a holiday with an official name nobody uses and a common name that means something broader than the law intends. It’s worth pulling apart, because the mechanism is one you can watch happening to other things.
The holiday’s name is a small mess, and the complaint has nothing to do with the presidents. The law says one thing and the advertisers said another, and the advertisers won. I want the day back for the man it was named after.
What the Broader Name Does
Washington’s Birthday is about a man. Presidents Day is about an office.
Those sound similar and they’re not. A day about a person invites you to think about what he did. That means it can be argued with. He resigned his commission. He left after two terms. You can assess that. A day about an office invites nothing in particular. There’s no shared assessment available, because the holders of the office have almost nothing in common beyond having held it. Some were great. Some were dreadful. Averaging them produces no usable idea.
The broad name is easier to say and easier to sell things under. It also holds less. That’s a trade almost nobody made on purpose. That trade deserves more attention than it gets. Nobody voted to make the day mean less. It drifted there one sales flyer at a time, and I think things that drift deserve more suspicion than things that get decided.
Federal law still says Washington's Birthday; retailers and states made Presidents Day the common name.
The Two Men It Was Nearly About
The popular version tends to fold in Lincoln, whose birthday is 12 February, ten days before Washington’s on the 22nd. Several states observed both separately and some still mark Lincoln’s day on its own.
That folding is understandable and it costs something. Washington and Lincoln are interesting for opposite reasons, and merging them flattens both.
Washington stands out for what he declined. He handed back power twice when nobody could have made him, and the norm he created by leaving held for a hundred and fifty years on his example alone.
Lincoln stands out for what he endured and what he chose while enduring it. He held a fracturing country together through four years of war and prepared, in writing, to hand over to a successor he expected to beat him.
One story is about restraint with power. The other is about integrity under unbearable pressure. They rhyme, and they’re not the same lesson, and a day called Presidents Day teaches neither of them. Given the choice, I’d split the day back into two and let each man have his own, because both stories are good enough to deserve a whole day of attention.
| Washington | Lincoln | |
|---|---|---|
| Birthday | 22 February | 12 February |
| Stands out for | What he declined | What he endured and chose |
| The lesson | Restraint with power | Integrity under unbearable pressure |
| Ten minutes on | 1783, handing in his commission | 1864, writing what he’d do when he lost |
Watch This Happen to Your Own Material
I’ve written 113+ books under my own name, and this exact compression is the commonest problem I see in a first draft. It frustrates me more than bad grammar ever could, because grammar is easy to fix and a flattened story takes real digging to bring back.
Somebody tells me about one manager on one Tuesday who did one thing. By the time it reaches the page it’s become a passage about leadership. The particular person has been promoted into a category and the life has gone out of it.
The general version feels safer to write. It can’t be contradicted, it offends nobody, and it sounds like the kind of thing that belongs in a book. It’s also unreadable, because there’s nothing in it for the reader to hold. Every time I find a paragraph about a category, I go looking for the person it was before somebody sanded it down.
That search is the most satisfying part of my job. The person was there all along, and the draft only needed somebody stubborn enough to ask for them back.
The Test I Use
Take any paragraph in your draft and ask whether a named human being does something in it at a specific moment.
If yes, it can stay. If no, one of two things is true. Either it’s connective tissue, which you need a little of, or it’s a specific thing that got generalized, in which case the original is better and it’s still recoverable if you ask the right question.
The right question is almost always: who, and when, and what did they say. People answer that question with detail they’ll never produce in response to a request for their leadership philosophy.
None of This Means Renaming Was Wrong
There’s an argument for the broad name.
Honoring a single figure gets harder as a country ages and reassesses. A day about the office survives changing views in a way that a day about one man doesn’t. That’s a real advantage and it’s why these shifts keep happening.
That’s a fair point and I don’t resent it. A day that survives changing views is worth something, even when I miss what it used to hold.
The point is that it’s a trade with a cost. You buy durability and you spend specificity. Knowing which one you’re spending is the whole of the skill.
How do you mark Presidents Day?
Most people mark it by not working, if they’re among the people who get the day, and by encountering a great many advertisements.
If you want the older version, take the two men it was nearly about and spend ten minutes on each. Washington in 1783, handing in his commission. Lincoln in 1864, writing down what he’d do when he lost.
Those are two decisions made by men who could have chosen otherwise with no consequence, and ten minutes with either one beats anything the mattress sale has to offer. I’d like to see the day win back its legal name, even if it happens one household at a time.
Presidents Day FAQ
- What is the official name for the holiday on the third Monday in February?, U.S. Office of Personnel Management
- George Washington's Birthday, National Archives
- Abraham Lincoln's Blind Memorandum, Library of Congress
- George Washington Surrenders His Commission to Congress, 23 December 1783, Center for the Study of the American Constitution, University of Wisconsin