The problem with holidays given a specific date, such as the 4th of July or December 25th, is that they regularly fall in the middle of the week. While Wednesday is a fine day to take off if you’re sick or need to run some errands, calling it a holiday can be a bit of a stretch. Most weekends don’t even earn the title, so what are we supposed to do with one day, have a parade?
Of all the problems in the world, this one was addressed by Congress back in 1968. With the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Columbus Day and Veterans Day were turned into guaranteed three-day weekends.
Although Congress changed their tune on Veterans Day, returning it to November 11th in 1975, we still enjoy four Monday holidays, including Labor Day, thanks to this Act. The catch of course is: They are uniform Mondays. If you’ve ever spent one returning from a trip, you know they can fall short of feeling like a holiday too. After all, it’s still a Monday.
Sometimes you can’t win for losing, but when the idea is to make everything the same, … well, it wasn’t much of an idea to begin with. And speaking of, you can help make the next change in our holiday schedule by supporting the effort to turn Columbus Day into Exploration Day! For the why try Boing Boing, otherwise head on over to ExplorationDayUSA.org to find out what you can do.
[Image from the National Archives]
