George Washington was not a huge fan of celebrating his birthday.
A diary entry on his 28th birthday, Feb. 22, 1760, reveals a busy day installing a fence around the peach orchard at Mount Vernon, his home in Virginia.
As Alexis Coe, a presidential historian and Washington biographer, put it, “He would be more apt to chronicle the weather on his birthday than any present he received — unless it was a mule.”
And yet, nearly 300 years after his birth, many Americans will have the third Monday in February off to honor the first president of the United States. (In 2025, that falls on Feb. 17.)
Colloquially known as Presidents’ Day in a nod to the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and other past presidents, the federal holiday officially celebrates only Washington’s birthday.
The story of how it became a three-day weekend is steeped in differing calendars, inconsistent punctuation, labor issues and, of course, politics.
‘A snub to King George.’
In all of her years of researching Washington, Ms. Coe, the author of “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington,” said she had never come across any reference to regular celebrations.
But by 1778, as Washington was leading the Continental Army against the British, his vision for what a birthday celebration could mean, at least for a new country, began to change. When he and his men were stationed at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, a group of drummers and fifers celebrated his birthday with a performance in front of his quarters.
Jeffrey Engel, the executive director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said Washington looked to his foes for inspiration. The birthday celebrations during the war, he said, “began as a snub to King George.”
After he became president, Washington continued to be the subject of regular birthday festivities, including balls and fireworks in his honor in New York and Philadelphia, the sites of the first presidential mansions. Finding something to celebrate was key to Washington’s success, Ms. Coe said. As the new country was looking to establish a national identity, Washington was eager to fill that void.
“Washington did not love the limelight; he did not have patience for excessive praise or nostalgia, but he understood the importance of mythmaking,” Ms. Coe said. “He was well aware that he was a unifying figure.”
A tradition sticks.
Americans celebrated Washington’s birthday informally in the years after his death in 1799, and Feb. 22 was first recognized as a national holiday in 1879.
Every year since 1896, the Senate has selected one of its members, alternating between the parties, to read Washington’s 7,640-word farewell address in a legislative session on or around Feb. 22. . Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, was chosen to deliver the 2025 address on Feb. 18.
The contemporary idea of a Presidents’ Day came in 1968, when Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which designated certain government holidays — including Washington’s Birthday, Labor Day and Memorial Day — to be observed on Mondays. The idea was to give federal employees more three-day weekends. Columbus Day, now often celebrated as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, became a federal holiday, too.
“It’s an economic motivation,” Mr. Engel said. “When they talked about the three-day weekend, they said, this will be good for business. They didn’t sugarcoat it.”
The law went into effect in 1971, and soon enough, Americans began celebrating the nation’s leaders by buying large appliances and mattresses.
The act did not, however, change the name of Washington’s Birthday to Presidents’ Day, nor did it broaden the holiday to celebrate Lincoln, who was born on Feb. 12, 1809, and whose birthday is not a federally recognized holiday.
Which presidents are celebrated where, and when? It’s complicated.
States are free to enact their own holidays for state employees and public school students, and not all follow the federal calendar. Figuring out exactly who is being honored where, and when, can be tricky. In the South, for example, there has been some resistance to honoring Lincoln, who led the Union during the Civil War and put an end to slavery. Some of the former pro-slavery states still treat Confederate figures with respect while also honoring figures from the civil rights movement.
Nearly two dozen states officially recognize Presidents’ Day. More than a dozen others do not observe it at all. In Virginia, where Washington was born and lived for much of his life, it is simply known as George Washington Day. Some states, like Illinois, where Lincoln started his political career, and New York, where he delivered a powerful speech that helped start his presidential campaign in 1860, give Lincoln and Washington their own holiday rather than lump them into one.
Other states chose their own adventure for various reasons.
Missouri celebrates the birthdays of three presidents on three different days — Washington, Lincoln and Harry S. Truman, who was born in Missouri on May 8, 1884. Kentucky has public holidays for the birthdays of Washington; Lincoln; Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy; and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In Alabama, the third Monday in February is officially recognized as George Washington & Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday. Jefferson’s reputation as a founding father has come under scrutiny in recent years because he owned more than 600 enslaved people and fathered children with one of them, Sally Hemings. (Washington was also a slaveholder.) Jefferson was born in April and lived in Virginia.
Along with Mississippi, Alabama also observes the birthdays of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, on the same day in January. Both states celebrate Confederate Memorial Day in April and recognize Jefferson Davis’s birthday as a state holiday (Mississippi in May, Alabama in June). Alabama celebrates Mrs. Rosa L. Parks Day in December.
Georgia and Indiana take an entirely different approach to Washington’s Birthday, which they celebrate around Christmas. Indiana and New Mexico celebrate Lincoln’s birthday on the day after Thanksgiving.
What’s in an apostrophe?
You’ve seen ads for sales for Presidents Day, President’s Day and Presidents’ Day. So which is it? It depends whom you ask.
The Associated Press says no apostrophe. More than a dozen states officially use the singular possessive, “President’s,” including Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Wyoming. The New York Times uses a plural possessive, “Presidents’,” noting in a stylebook entry that “the name reflects the decision by some states to use the holiday to honor both Washington and Lincoln.”
Ms. Coe, the biographer, said Washington would have been happy to celebrate his birthday with other presidents, apostrophe or not.
“He never wanted the country to be too invested in him as an individual, because if they were it meant the chances of its survival after he died would greatly decrease,” she said.
Washington left the office after two terms because he did not want to die in office and risk setting a precedent that the role would be inherited, Ms. Coe said. “Then,” she said, “you would take the most promising country in the world in the 19th century and set it on a clear path toward monarchical rule.”