Who are we honoring on Presidents' Day?

Not all of our presidents, as some have favored. Most of us are hard on our presidents, and there's very few we want to memorialize. The National Mall has made very select choices with only four honored: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR (five if you count Grant's memorial at the foot of the Capitol.)

Presidents' Day initially was a celebration of George Washington's birthday on February 22

For almost 100 years, we honored him on that day. In 1968, it became a national holiday under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, that placed it on the third Monday in February. Officially, the celebration is still "Washington's Birthday."

Lincoln's birthday anniversary is February 12

Many believed that Lincoln should also be celebrated nationally and the holiday's name of Presidents' Day fell into use. Advertisers adopted it.

In February, 1971, President Nixon issued a proclamation naming the holiday "President's Day" and calling it "the first such three-day holiday set aside to honor all presidents, even myself." The nerve!

Fortunately, given the extremely long and arduous process of authorizing, designing, and completing monuments on the National Mall, only the select few received homage.

While Congress acted after Lincoln's assassination to authorize a monument commission, it wasn't until 1910 that it became a serious undertaking.

Design options included a simple log cabin and a highway to Gettysburg. Work began on the Parthenon-like structure in 1914.

Begun in 1848, construction on the Washington Monument stalled in 1854, and the 150 foot shaft remained unfinished until 1884.

In my forthcoming novel, Faith on the Mall, the dedication ceremony comes early in the book with all its pomp and circumstance. By the war years, the cattle for the soldiers tenting on the Mall grazed around the shaft and were slaughtered inside, offal piling up outside. So much for honoring George, until construction of the 550 foot obelisk began again in 1879.