George Washington Had 2 Birthdays, More To Know About Presidents Day

Banks, post offices and other services will be closed Monday, Feb.17, for Presidents Day, a holiday established by Congress decades ago to move the celebration of George Washington’s birthday on Feb. 22, 1732, to the third Monday of February every year.

Washington was well aware of the distinction between his inaugural role as president and its distinction from the British crown. According to historians, he was not keen, nor were any of the Founding Fathers, on replicating the indulgent celebrations of kings and royalty.

Today, Washington shares what little luster is still associated with Presidents Day with Abraham Lincoln, who many scholars believe was the most influential president in U.S. history, and all other U.S. presidents.

More than anything else, Presidents Day has become a major shopping holiday with retailers offering deep discounts on everything from mattresses and furniture to technology and appliances.

Below are more things to know about Presidents Day:

Washington Has 2 Birthdays

George Washington was born Feb. 22, 1732, on his family’s Popes Creek plantation near the Potomac River in Virginia.

Technically, though, he was born on Feb. 11 of that year. How’s that? The ancient Julian calendar was still in use in 1732. The Gregorian calendar, a more accurate measure of time adopted in 1752, added 11 days, moving Washington’s birthday to later in the month.

Either way, Washington paid little attention to his birthday, according to Mountvernon.org, the website of the organization that manages his estate. Surviving records make no mention of observances at Mount Vernon, while his diary shows he was often hard at work.

“If he had it his way, he would be at home with his family,” historian Alexis Coe, author of “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington,” told The Associated Press last year. Some of his believed nieces and nephews or close friend Marquis de Lafayette might stop by, and Martha might indulge her husband with a cake, “but that’s about it,” Coe said.

When Did His Birthday Become A Holiday?

Washington’s birthday was initially celebrated by his peers in government, but Congress voted during his first two terms to take a short commemorative break each year, with one exception, his last birthday in office, Coe said. By then Washington was less popular, partisanship was rampant and many members of his original Cabinet were gone, including Thomas Jefferson.

“One way to show their disdain for his Federalist policies was to keep working through his birthday,” Coe said.

The Library of Congress does note that a French military officer, the Comte de Rochambeau, threw a ball celebrating Washington’s 50th birthday in 1782.

After the first president’s death at age 67 in 1799, a market almost immediately sprang up for Washington memorabilia.

“Even in that early moment, Americans kind of conflated consumerism with patriotic memory,” Seth Bruggeman, a Washington historian, author and history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, told The AP in 2024.

It wasn’t until 1832, the centennial of Washington’s birth, that Congress established a committee to arrange national “parades, orations and festivals,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

It took another nearly 50 years, in 1879, for Washington’s birthday to be made a legal holiday for federal employees in the District of Columbia.

What About Abraham Lincoln?

Lincoln’s birthday was never an official federal holiday, a much-lamented exclusion among those who cite his leadership of the Union states through the American Civil War and the emancipation of enslaved people. Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865.

The 16th U.S. president was born in 1809 in LaRue County, Kentucky, though his birth state isn’t one of the five that observe his birthday as a holiday. Lincoln’s adopted state of Illinois, along with California, Connecticut, Missouri, and New York, observe the Feb. 12 holiday.

The official designation of holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February is Washington’s Birthday. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971 doesn’t mention Lincoln’s birthday, or even Presidents Day. Some lawmakers argued during debate nearly 55 years ago that Washington’s birthday should be renamed Presidents Day to include Lincoln, but Congress rejected that.

Before the 1971 legislation, Washington’s birthday was celebrated on the anniversary of his birth regardless of the day of the week. In the 1960s, it was one of nine federal holidays that fell on specific dates on different days of the week.

Congress moved some of them to Mondays to curb what some said was suspiciously high absenteeism among federal workers when a holiday fell midweek. Lawmakers also recognized the benefits of a three-day weekend to the economy.

Bruggerman told The AP that Washington and other Founding Fathers “would have been deeply worried by how the holiday became taken over by commercial and private interests” because they were generally distrustful of corporations.

“It wasn’t that they forbade them. But they saw corporations as like little republics that potentially threatened the power of The Republic,” he said.

When Are Other Federal Holidays Observed?

There are 12 federal holidays in 2025. New Year’s Day on Jan. 1 and Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Inauguration Day, both on Jan. 20 this year, have passed. Others are:

Washington’s Birthday, Monday, Feb. 17
Memorial Day, Monday, May 26
Juneteenth National Independence Day, Thursday, June 19
Independence Day, Friday, July 4
Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 1
Columbus Day, Monday, Oct. 13
Veterans Day, Tuesday, Nov. 11
Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 27
Christmas Day, Thursday, Dec. 25

What’s Open And Closed?

A few of the services that will be closed Monday for Presidents Day include:

The Federal Reserve system won’t be operating, so that means most banks will be closed. ATMs will operate as usual.

The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and bond markets will be closed. So will the U.S. Postal Service. Presidents Day is also a holiday for Patch employees.

Courts, village, town and city halls and non-essential government offices will be closed in most cases. So will local Department of Motor Vehicle offices.

Many schools will be closed, but that’s usually a local decision. Trash pickup schedules are also set locally, so check with your local government.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.