Happy Birthday--Whenever

With digital clocks, children now can tell time without figuring out the big hand and the little hand. Between Velcro fasteners and loafers, they can escape the art of tying shoelaces. And with the nation’s holiday schedule, they can go through life thinking that all famous people were born with floating birthdays that always fall on Monday.

The confusion comes from the scheduling of holidays on Mondays to concoct three-day weekends. Thus George Washington’s birthday is on Feb. 22 but is celebrated in all states on the third Monday in February--Feb. 18 this year. It is called Presidents’ Day in four states and Washington-Lincoln Day in five.

Twenty states, including California, do celebrate Lincoln’s birthday on his birth day, today. Sort of. State offices are closed, but city and county employees work. Los Angeles schools were off on Monday.

Democrats tend to schedule Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners during the most convenient congressional recess. It really doesn’t matter, since they were born a month apart.

There will be a new official holiday next year, when the third Monday in January will mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. This year it fell on the third Sunday of January in New York, the third Monday in four states and Jan. 15 in 16 states. In Arkansas, state employees have Jan. 15 off, with the option of deciding whom they want to remember--King or Robert E. Lee, who was born Jan. 19.

Maybe we should spread our holidays out a bit. One way would be to elect a President who was born in June, the only month in which there is no presidential birth day.