History of Presidents' Day

Presidents’ Day has been celebrated for centuries but it wasn’t always an official holiday or known as Presidents’ Day.

The idea for celebrating Presidents goes back to the year 1800. George Washington died in December of 1799, and every year after that his February 22^nd birthday was a day of remembrance. In the 1800s, Washington was known as the most important figure in American history. There was a big celebration for the centennial of his birthday, and the Washington Monument started to be built in 1848. Although, these celebrations were unofficial observances, his birthday wouldn’t become a federal holiday until the late 1870s.

A senator in Arkansas first proposed the idea of Washington’s Birthday becoming a federal holiday. It was made official in 1879, by President Rutherford B. Hayes. At first, it only applied to residents living in the Washington D.C. area but by 1885 it was celebrated across the nation. Washington’s Birthday was the first federal holiday to honor the life of an individual American.

The transition from Washington’s Birthday to Presidents’ Day slowly started in the later 1960s. Congress wanted to create more three-day weekends to make people less inclined to miss work. This was known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Once Washington’s Birthday was moved from February 22^nd to the third Monday of February people started to honor Lincoln as well as Washington because the date falls in the middle of both of their birthdays.

It wasn’t long before marketers began advertising “Presidents’ Day Sales”. By the mid-80s, most people referred to it as Presidents’ Day. The name change was pretty much cemented in the early 2000s, half the states called it Presidents’ Day on their calendars.  Only “official” calendars refer to the holiday as Washington’s Birthday now.

 History.com Editors. (2010, October 26). Presidents' day 2022. History.com. Retrieved February 16, 2022, from https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/presidents-day