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Mount Rushmore
Credit: OG Productionz | Pexels
Mount Rushmore with the sculpted heads, from left to right, of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The 60ft-high faces chiseled into the rock in the Black Hills, South Dakota were sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln, from 1927 to 1941.

Why weren't we in school on Monday?

Students had the day off on Monday, Feb. 20, 2023, in honor of Presidents Day, a national holiday that’s been celebrated since the late 1800s.
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Presidents Day is a national holiday that falls on the third Monday in February every year. This year, that's today. Students have the day off but why? To understand, we have to go back 291 years to Feb. 22, 1732, the day President George Washington was born.

Washington’s Birthday

Following Washington’s death in 1799, Feb. 22 was viewed as a day of mourning and remembrance in the newly-formed United States. The day was unofficially observed and marked by celebrations across the nation, but it was officially declared a holiday in Washington D.C. in 1879 when President Rutherford B. Hayes signed it into law.

The holiday was initially only celebrated in Washington D.C., but by 1885, it was recognized nationally as “Washington’s Birthday.”

By 1896, it had become a tradition on Feb. 22 for a member of the Senate to recite Washington’s farewell address.

Uniform Monday Holiday Act

Washington’s Birthday generally was not celebrated as Presidents Day until 1971 with the implementation of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

Signed into law in 1968, the act was designed to give workers more three-day weekends. It moved four existing federal holidays from their fixed dates to Mondays, with the four holidays being Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Columbus Day and Washington’s Birthday. But Veterans Day returned to its fixed date of Nov. 11 in 1978. Martin Luther King Jr. day joined the federal Monday holidays in 1983.

Because it is now celebrated on the third Monday of February annually, Washington’s birthday rarely falls on the first U.S. president's actual birthday, which is part of the reason why we often refer to the holiday as Presidents Day.

Presidents Day?

Contrary to popular belief, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act did not change the name of Washington’s Birthday to Presidents Day. In fact, Presidents Day isn’t actually the official name of the holiday.

A name change was proposed in 1951, but it didn’t make it into law.

The goal was to create a holiday that celebrated every president throughout American history, rather than Washington specifically. Abraham Lincoln, the country's 16th president, was born on Feb. 12, 1809. So the change of date to the third Monday in February and unofficial title of the holiday could also celebrate both Washington's and Lincoln’s birthdays and all the other presidents.

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Portraits of George Washington, left, and Abraham Lincoln, right

George Washington, left, and Abraham Lincoln (credit: Gordon Johnson | Pixabay)

While the name "Presidents Day" was never formally adopted, by the 1980s, businesses began to embrace the Presidents Day moniker and largely popularized it through advertising campaigns and holiday sales.

Ohio, which marks the day, claims eight U.S. presidents, seven of whom were born in the state  William H. Harrison (born in Virginia), Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William H. Taft and Warren G. Harding.

Some states, including Virginia, Illinois, Iowa and New York, still recognize the holiday as Washington’s Birthday.

In recognition of Presidents Day, or Washington’s Birthday, CSU offices were closed and there were no classes, Monday, Feb. 20, 2023.