Rick Hertzberg bemoans the lack of celebration of Presidents Day:
February 22 used to be Washington’s Birthday. It still is, of course, and that’s still its official name, but we no longer call it that, so we no longer have a holiday devoted exclusively to remembering the Father of His Country, a very great man. … Presidents Day is a solution to a bureaucratic problem. The problem is, or was, that February 12 is Lincoln’s birthday, and that used to be a holiday in many states (still is in some). Plus, a few recalcitrant states celebrated the birthdays of Jefferson Davis and/or Robert E. Lee. Anyhow, we ended up with too many holidays in February, which is bad for the Gross Domestic Product. So they all got smooshed together, and department store advertisers gave it its name. The horrible result is that we have a holiday that nominally honors, among others, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Richard M. Nixon.
