Why President's Day Never Existed And Probably Never Will

Contrary to popular belief, there's no such thing as President's Day. In fact, the holiday has never has existed on a national level. Rather, the federal holiday dubbed as "President's Day" is legally the celebration of just one U.S. President, George Washington.

Although this day has been commercialized by advertisers as President's Day adn many Americans commonly refer to it as that, the official name of today's day off is "Washington's Birthday." 

This is further confirmed by the federal government's Office of Personnel Management list of 2013 holidays which lists time off for U.S. bureaucrats. The OPM denotes Monday, Feb. 18 as "Washington's Birthday" with an asterisk next to it and a footnote that explains, "This holiday is designated as 'Washington's Birthday' in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees," reads the OPM. "Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in law."

Washington's Birthday has been a national holiday since 1885, making it the first holiday to honor an American hero. It was originally celebrated on Washington's actual birthday, Feb. 22, but that date was shifted to the third Monday in February by the "Uniform Monday Holiday Act" in 1971 which moved federal holidays to Mondays in order to give federal employees a three-day weekend. An early draft of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act would have renamed the holiday to "Presidents' Day" to honor the birthdays of both Washington and Abraham Lincoln whose birthday is also in mid-February, but this motion was shot down. 

In 1968 Illinois lawmakers proposed changing the name of the holiday to "Presidents' Day" to honor Lincoln's birthday.  However, that motion was blocked by Virginia legislators who maintained that Washington was First in Our Hearts and First in the National League East.

Nonetheless, about a dozen of state governments have officially renamed their Washington's Birthday observances as "Presidents' Day", "Washington and Lincoln Day", or something of that nature.