Happy Presidents Day.
'Twas not always thus. Back when I was in school, we celebrated the birthdays of only two presidents: Washington (February 22) and Lincoln (February 12). Washington's Birthday was a national holiday. Lincoln's Birthday was a holiday, but not (as I recall) the kind of holiday that permitted workers to stay home from work and (more to the point) students to stay home from school.
Both holidays called for the usual use of colored construction paper and crayons. Washington's Birthday involved designing axes used for chopping down cherry trees ("I cannot tell a lie"), and (I suppose) dollar coins (for throwing across the Potomac). Lincoln's Birthday involved log cabins (in which he was born). We didn't draw black slaves -- whether as owned (Washington) or freed (Lincoln).
So yes, we learned a prettified and mythological rendition of the lives of both presidents. And that's fine with me. We were kids. Kids need uplifting stories. The stories we learned about Washington and Lincoln were myths; as with all myths, they expressed deeper truths through fictional or fictionalized events.
Whether Washington really ever chopped down a cherry tree, and owned up to it with his father, wasn't important. Learning to acknowledge one's mistakes and faults was -- as was learning to tell the truth -- without trying to absolve oneself by seeking counseling. Whether Lincoln was really raised in a rustic cabin, and loved books so much that he damaged a borrowed book by wedging it between two of the logs may or may not have been true. What was clearly true was the fact that many great men in our history were born in humble settings and worked hard, both physically and mentally, from earliest childhood in order to succeed.
Washington and Lincoln were -- maybe for today's children, still are -- our Ulysses, our Aeneas, our King Henry V.
Then, in 1968, Congress decreed that Washington's Birthday would thenceforth occur on the third Monday of February. The bill originally changed the name of the holiday to Presidents' Day, but that change was not ultimately approved. Nevertheless, the new statute cut the direct relationship between Washington's date of birth and the federal holiday celebrating it, and various states enacted laws that called the new holiday by various names -- most frequently as "Presidents' Day", with the apostrophe either before or after the "s," or eliminated entirely.
In Washington, ironically, a state statute ignores the president of whom we're the namesake, declaring the holiday to be "President's Day."
Presidents Day (regardless of apostrophic placement) suggests a civil adoration of all U.S. Presidents, an exaltation of the executive office, rather than a celebration of any specific president -- the sort of holiday that I doubt would have left either Washington or Lincoln feeling comfortable. So today, I suppose, we must honor not only Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln -- but also Buchanan, Arthur, Harding, Nixon, and Bush (père et fils).
Actually, of course, we celebrate primarily the American retail industry, whose Presidents Day Sales dominate our newspapers to the exclusion of any individual president.
On the University of Washington campus, one finds a statue of the eponymous George Washington. For generations, each Washington's Birthday someone -- during the dark of night -- would slosh the statue with green paint. "Keep Washington Green," was the pun intended.
I walked by the statue this morning. It stood oxidized bronze and decidedly un-green in the falling rain. No one had bothered making a connection between the statue and the holiday. No one at all was around. All the students had probably gone off skiing for the day. I doubt if George Washington ever wore a pair of skis. With the sort of bindings they had back in those days, it's just as well that he didn't.
Happy Whatever Day!
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