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• Today’s holiday is a United States federal holiday officially designated as Washington’s Birthday.
• George Washington was born on February 12, 1731. (Interesting trivia… GW was born before England reformed its calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. The date above was via the Julian calendar, the equivalent of February 22, 1732 on the Gregorian calendar. Just what you wanted to learn today...)
• When does the Washington’s Birthday holiday fall on Washington’s birthday? (never)
• The Washington’s Birthday holiday was moved to the 3rd Monday of February in 1968 as part of the “Uniform Monday Holiday Law.”
• Arguments for the new “Monday” law were centered around benefits to families.
• 3-day holidays offer greater opportunities for family get-togethers.
• 3-day holidays allow greater participation in hobbies and educational and cultural activities.
• Monday holidays would improve production by reducing absenteeism and interruptions of production schedules.
• Retailers, excited over mid-winter sales opportunities, dubbed the new sales period (whether the 3-day weekend or the full span of February 12 through 22) “Presidents Day.” Voila. Our heroic, courageous, inspirational first President was (and is) reduced to a picture of his famous profile in the local advertiser.

Instead of a day at the malls, consider reading together Washington’s Farewell Address (read annually by a member of the U.S. Senate, about 7500 words, 45 minutes). Or perhaps President Washington’s Inaugural Address (a mere 1400+ words). Or how about just a selected paragraph or two from Wikipedia to discover anew how President Washington set down the principles, high civic morals, republican framework and traditions of a very fragile, desperately indebted, struggling new nation.

What time will you spend with your family today? What will you and they learn of our great first President, General George Washington? And more importantly, how will you and they apply what’s learned about George Washington to the civic debates of today?

Sources: Wikipedia, Prologue, Winter, 2004.

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