How One President’s Day Became Presidents’ Day

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. This year, Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, is scheduled to deliver the address on Feb. 27.

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.”