Today is George Washington’s birthday — well, one of them, anyway. I think we’ve touched on this before, but poor George has really had his birthday jerked around…. actually, for 47 of his 67 years, George Washington had two birthdays every year.
George was born on February 11th, 1732. Hold on…. in 1732, the Julian calendar (named for Julius Caesar) was in use in Great Britain, and in the US because we were colonies of Great Britain.
But in 1752, when George was 20, Great Britain adopted the new, improved calendar instituted by Pope Gregory the 13th and of course imposed it on its colonies, including the US.
The switch in calendars was made because the old calendar had become out of whack relative to the sun’s and earth’s cycles by many days. By 1752, it was off by eleven whole days. So those eleven days were simply dropped that year. The following February 1st was not February 2nd — it was February 11th. So George Washington’s birthday jumped all the way to February 22nd.
The calendar change didn’t sit well with a lot of colonial communities and many refused to go along with it, but George apparently took the change in stride and, from 1752 on, accepted February 22nd as his birthday.
However, give George credit — he took advantage of the situation to sometimes celebrate both days as his birthday. In 1799 he attended a gala birthday party in his honor in Alexandria, Virginia on February 11th. He wrote in his diary that night that he “went up to Alexandria for the celebration of my birthday.” Eleven days later, on February 22nd, 1799 he celebrated his second birthday of that year — which, sadly, turned out to be the last of his life. He died ten months later, on the evening of December 14, 1799.
It’s interesting that George Washington, our first President, had two real birthdays and we don’t celebrate either one of them. The best we can do is celebrate President’s Day on the 3rd Monday in February. Doesn’t seem fair…. but Happy Birthday George!!
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