When I was a little boy in the Southern California school system in the 70s and 80s there were separate holidays for Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays. Or at least this was my recollection. Both were celebrated. Then Martin Luther King Day became a federal holiday in 1986. I thought at time and for many years after that President’s Day was created out of a consolidation of Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthday in order to make room for Martin Luther King Day, on the reasoning that there’s a limit on the number of federal holidays. A number of years ago I looked into this and it turned out that this wasn’t true. I can’t remember the exact details. Lincoln’s Birthday was never a federal holiday but it was celebrated in California. There was also a shift beginning around the same time to rebrand Washington’s birthday as President’s Day. (Officially, it’s still Washington’s Birthday.)
In any case, my interest in this is that Abraham Lincoln should really have a national holiday. Some of this is a matter of him just really being a great president quite apart from the revolution brought about by the Civil War and the Reconstruction amendments. Sometimes great iconic figures aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. But the twin presidencies of Washington and Lincoln are if anything more powerful and important on close examination than they seem, though Washington’s role isn’t limited to his presidency. You have to see it in the context of his military and de facto political leadership during the Revolutionary War and his role in the period between the Revolution and his presidency, including his role at the constitutional convention. In any case, point being Washington and Lincoln are both critical figures in our national history. The holiday problem is that we have a logjam of birthdays, with King’s in January and both Washington’s and Lincoln’s falling in February. I guess there’s some reason why we can’t have that many national holidays right after each other. Fine. I don’t make the rules.