A number of my left-wing friends told me they absolutely will not be celebrating Donald Trump’s birthday on so-called Presidents’ Day, or any other day, by Act of Congress, or Executive Order, so help them God.
They came to this conclusion while spending the weekend brooding about the meaning of what originally was always known as “Washington’s Birthday,” a most sacred day in the canon of calendar patriotism, along with such causes of national celebration as Super Bowl Sunday and Oscar Night. So sad.
There is much confusion about whose birthday we are actually celebrating on so-called Presidents’ Day (or is it President’s Day?).
As a historian and as George Washington’s only living coauthor (see George Washington’s Expense Account by Gen. George Washington and Marvin Kitman, PFC, Ret.) I think it’s an outrage the way we are now forced to celebrate Gen. Washington’s birthday on the third Monday of February, instead of his original natal day (February 22).
An artifice concocted by the Congress back in the days (1968) when Congress did things before the invention of the Do-Nothing Congress, which judging by what it does today (a tax reform for the middle class that benefits only the rich) is better advised to do nothing—Presidents’ Day was meant by legislators to celebrate the birthdays of all our chief executives.
Not as bad as chopping down the Washington Monument, perhaps, but parity is a slap in the face of our founding father, who should be celebrating a happy 286th birthday.10
The downgrading of the founding father to just another POTUS is especially scandalous, as we seem to be marking on a curve in the progression of our presidents. I mean, to go from a Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison to a Trump should be cause for alarm.
Washington was first in war, first in peace, and first in expense account writing, worthy of a singular day of veneration.
Trump, who by definition is also being celebrated this weekend, will be remembered as first in lying, first in groping, first in paying off strippers he claimed not to even know, first in nepotism, and first in being a friend of the Russians.
By no means am I one of those killjoy Calvinists against three-day weekends as a matter of principle because they may contribute to slothfulness at the job. The trouble with society today, au contraire, is there are not enough three-day weekends and too many five-day weeks. Three-day weekends make life bearable.
I, for one, wouldn’t mind celebrating Republican Calvin Coolidge’s birthday with a three-day weekend.11 Our thirtieth president, Silent Cal understood what it was all about when he first said, “When more and more people are unable to find work, unemployment results.”
Some of us wouldn’t mind a three-day weekend celebrating Millard Fillmore’s birthday (January 7), the thirteenth president famous for the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act and as the candidate of the Know Nothing Party, spiritual forefather of today’s Republican Party.
Or even James Buchanan, number fifteen, born April 23, who not only contributed to the start of the Civil War, which some of us think still hasn’t ended, but also was the first gay president.
Like it or not, I won’t be surprised that before Trump is a blip in history, we will be standing up and saluting a huge military parade down Constitution Avenue, honoring the philanderer in chief’s birthday with a three-day weekend (put June 14 on your calendars).
Until then, a merry Presidents’ Day to you, one and all.