History Takes a Holiday for Sake of 3-Day Spree

It has been 20 years since Congress enacted the Monday holiday scheme for Washington’s birthday, Memorial Day and Columbus Day. At the time, the idea of tampering with Father Time seemed a good way to ensure that Americans would have long, three-day weekends in place of the come-what-may scenario of the traditional holiday calendar.

The law was passed by wide margins in 1968, with substantial support from business organizations and government employees. The House Judiciary Committee was convinced that the holidays could be observed on Monday “without doing violence to either history or tradition.” Its Senate counterpart interpreted the change in terms of the “substantial benefits to both the spiritual and economic life of the nation.”

In retrospect, history has scarcely been the beneficiary of the legislation. The meaning of the Monday holidays has been lost in the weekend exodus. We celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on a Monday but not on the actual date of his birth. It’s difficult for Americans to get excited about Columbus Day when it falls on Oct. 8 or on the day before they must return to work, or about Memorial Day when the Monday--as it did last year--bears no relation to the date that for years drew their ancestors to cemeteries to commemorate those who died for their country.

The third Monday in February, designated by some states as President’s Day or Washington-Lincoln Day, honors neither of the two leaders in a special way. The result is a murkiness, especially among young children, about the specific qualities that made these Presidents the object of high regard.

Until this century Feb. 22 was the only holiday besides Christmas that all the states in the Union celebrated. What’s more, nearly two-thirds of the states have a county named for Washington but the history of that naming is probably no longer recalled on the third Monday in February.

Part of the dilemma in this matter has been freedom of choice in a democracy, with Americans rightly having no stigma for choosing to observe holidays in their own way. For that reason, some states do not observe the Monday holiday scheme. Another American trait, compromise, is also to blame. Rather than rejecting the 1968 proposal or applying it to all holidays (Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas were excluded, as was Veterans Day subsequently), Congress compromised, just as it did with daylight-savings time, whose observance does not fit squarely into the time peg when Mother Nature provides the most light.

Compromise works well in politics, but when applied to the nation’s history, it does harm. Monday holidays give primacy to leisure rather than historical accuracy. So students grow up knowing little about their past.

For example, a recent study by the National Endowment for the Humanities indicated that one-third of the high school seniors it surveyed didn’t know that Columbus came to America before 1750. Compare that state of affairs to the America of my youth when holidays were celebrated on their proper dates--and with the reading, even memorization, of historical documents and re-enactment of noted events by youngsters.

The most significant benefit in reverting to the traditional holiday dates is strengthening the historical tie among generations, which tends to be loose in a democratic nation. Alexis de Tocqueville noted this deficiency in 1835 when he wrote that “not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”