History of Presidents’ Day

Following the death of George Washington in 1799, his birthday on February 22nd became a perennial day of remembrance. At the time, Washington was venerated as the most important figure in American history, and events like the 1832 centennial of his birth and the start of construction of the Washington Monument in 1848 were cause for national celebration.

What Did Presidents Day First Celebrate?

George Washington’s Birthday was an unofficial observance for most of the 1800s, it was not until the late 1870s that it became a federal holiday. Senator Stephen Wallace Dorsey of Arkansas was the first to propose the measure, and in 1879 President Rutherford B. Hayes signed it into law.

The holiday initially only applied to the District of Columbia, but in 1885 it was expanded to the entire nation. At the time, Washington’s Birthday joined four other nationally recognized federal holidays—Christmas, New Year’s Day, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving—while the addition of Washington’s Birthday became the first federal holiday to celebrate the life of a solitary American. Nearly 100 years later in 1983, Martin Luther King Jr. Day would become the second federal holiday to follow in Washington’s footsteps.

What is Modern Presidents’ Day?

The shift from Washington’s Birthday to Presidents’ Day began in the late 1960s, when Congress proposed a measure known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Championed by Senator Robert McClory of Illinois, the proposed law sought to shift the celebration of several federal holidays from specific dates to a series of predetermined Mondays, which was seen by many as a novel way to create more three-day weekends for workers, while reducing federal employee absenteeism.

While some argued that shifting holidays from their original dates would cheapen their meaning, the bill also had widespread support from both the private sector and labor unions, as well as a surefire way to bolster retail sales.

In its modern form, Presidents’ Day is used by many patriotic and historical groups as a date for staging celebrations and reenactments, while a number of states also require that their public schools spend the days leading up to Presidents’ Day teaching students about the lives and accomplishments of American presidents.