{"id":1141,"date":"2018-02-19T15:37:11","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T15:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=1141"},"modified":"2018-02-19T15:37:11","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T15:37:11","slug":"presidents-day-%e2%80%94-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=1141","title":{"rendered":"Presidents Day \u2014 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is Presidents Day \u2014 a national holiday. However, neither Congress or the President has ever declared there is<\/em> such a thing as Presidents Day. Even though today is an officially observed federal holiday, it is actually on the books as Washington\u2019s Birthday<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In 1879, under President Rutherford B. Hayes, Washington\u2019s Birthday became a legal holiday and was observed on February 22 – George\u2019s actual birthday. Every year, George Washington\u2019s birthday was a big celebration \u2014 especially in the Washington, D.C. area. But then in 1968, Congress passed the Monday Holiday Law to \u201cprovide uniform annual observances of certain legal public holidays on Mondays.\u201d The idea was that creating more 3-day weekends would bring substantial benefits to both the spiritual and economic life of the nation. At least that\u2019s what Congress thought.<\/p>\n

So we celebrate this third Monday in February every year as Presidents Day even though neither of the Presidents it supposedly honors was born on that day \u2014 but what the heck, we get a 3-day weekend to benefit our spiritual and economic life.<\/p>\n

Rather than just let this matter, go let\u2019s complicate it further…George Washington was actually born on February 11 in 1731. How can that be, you say? Well, During Washington\u2019s lifetime, people in Great Britain and America switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. As a result of this calendar reform, people born before 1752 were told to add 11 days to their birth dates. Those born between January 1 and March 25 also had to do one year to be in sync with the new calendar. By the time Washington became President in 1789, he celebrated his birthday on February 22 and listed his year of birth as 1732.<\/p>\n

We get a 3-day weekend today, but let\u2019s not forget about George… I think he deserves his own day, so let\u2019s raise our glasses to George.
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is Presidents Day \u2014 a national holiday. However, neither Congress or the President has ever declared there is such a thing as Presidents Day. Even though today is an officially observed federal holiday, it is actually on the books … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1142,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}