Happy Presidents (or Presidents’, Or President’s) Day

I want to wish each and every one of you a merry Presidents Day. I hope you have all of your decorating done and will have a wonderful Presidents’ Day dinner and enjoy all of your President’s Day customs like. . . .

Notice: The Church knows how to throw good holidays, but the government has not got a clue. This day began as a commemoration of George Washington, that great man and father of our country. He deserves a holiday, and customs started to grow up around the day, such as having cherry pie and stores throwing sales.

But then the sentiment grew to throw in Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was also in February. And then, what the heck, let’s just celebrate ALL presidents, as if they were all of the stature of these two great Americans.So the holiday became generalized into impossible-to-visualize vagueness. In doing so, the very reason for the holiday became lost. (Why should we celebrate presidents and not have days devoted to the other branches of government? Legislator Day? Supreme Court Day?)

And then the real reason to have holidays in our secularized state emerged: Let’s change the day, marking a specific historic event, into a moveable feast so that it will always produce a three-day weekend! That way government workers and others will have their day off work as part of a long weekend!

(I just wish someone would authoritatively rule on the place of the apostrophe in the holiday’s name.)

Here is why this all matters: This is another example, along with what we are seeing in education and theology, of the shift away from the OBJECT (content,Christ, honoring someone) to the SUBJECT (me, me, me).