February was a great month when I was growing up:
First Lincoln's Birthday February 12 which was not a day off but all the bakeries had log shaped cakes YUM
Second was Valentine's Day, February 14 when Grandmother served Winter strawberry short cake with heart shaped shortbread and strawberries and real whipped cream. We traded valentines and candy too.
Third was Washington's Birthday February 22 which was a day off. and every bakery sold and every dinner table held a cherry pie to be topped with ice cream!
More traditions lost.
Yeah I remember those days as well. I lived in upstate New York on a farm and went to a rural school. Cold. But great sledding.
Lincoln’s Birthday was always a day off for us.
“Grandmother served Winter strawberry short cake with heart shaped shortbread and strawberries and real whipped cream. “
Sounds fun.
Did you do that for your kids and/or grand kids (if you’re that old) too?
I shall never forget Washington’s Birthday 1956. I was 10 and we got up early to go to the Washington’s Birthday sales. I got a TV set for my room for ONE DOLLAR. That was great.
Now recognition of all presidents is lumped together into one day.
And the big events of the day are Presidents Day sales at car dealers, furniture stores and discount mattress peddlers.
But Michael King Jr. (MLK Jr.’s real birth name and legal name) gets a full legal holiday because he is Oh-so much more important than all the presidents lumped together.
/s
IMHO MLK Jr. doesn’t amount to a pimple on the butt of Gerorge Washinton’s horse.
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln
It was a day off when I was a kid. Although it was usually rolled into our winter vacation.
My Grandma always made cherry pie.
Never made the connection until now.
Her parents were both immigrants from Switzerland.
Thanks for the memories.
Will be making pie on the 22nd.
It was a day to listen to legend. The history, if one learns it, is rather ugly.
ML/NJ (Honest Yankee)
Not surprisingly, not a PEEP on Google about Lincoln’s birthday. But every obscure minority “15 minutes of fame” person gets a full work up.
March, 1863
By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation.
Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation. And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.
In NJ, we had off on Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday.