Did you know that a majority of national holidays aren’t celebrated at a federal level?
The first four federal holidays created in 1870 were New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day, with six more to follow over the next century.
Besides the aforementioned four, we observe Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans’ Day.
To put that number in perspective, we have 11 total federally recognized holidays at the moment.
Holidays get their federal designation by being passed in both the US Senate and House then getting signed into law by the president.
Even then, just because it’s recognized at a federal level, that doesn’t mean that each individual state recognizes the occasion.
For me, that just sounds idiotic and worthless – if the main governing body of the country is closed for a holiday, then why not all 50 states?
I suppose I’ll just chalk that up to elected officials being ridiculous and move on with my random investigation.
Naturally, this research is entirely out of left field, but it is a topic that has been on my mind now and again whenever I’m posting the daily weather on our Facebook page.
That’s not including days
where there are no listed holidays or it’s something so obscure that I have to find a completely different
graphic to include with my forecast reports.
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I’ve always wondered how national holidays are named and have their designated date for celebration.
It’s not like we learned about the origin of holidays in school – unless it was somewhere in my early elementary years because then who else really remembers that either?!
However, with the help of Google, I found the “National Day Archives” business website and was able to find out how many of those holidays were created.
Apparently, it’s a fairly simple matter of registering the name of the holiday and date you want with the company – plus, it’s a free process!
The company lists a number of reasons to create a holiday including for fun, to promote a cause or group, to build a business brand, or to give a gift or honor someone special.
While I find most of those reasons to be pretty vague and broad, the website also mentions that their holiday applications take at least 7-10 business days to process.
So, basically, it’s pretty easy to fill out an application for an arbitrary holiday with that company.
I guess that’s why there are so many overlapping national holidays for certain dates every once in a while.
That doesn’t even include the monthly designations we hear of like Breast Cancer Awareness Month, National Principals Month, Rhubarb Month, or Squirrel Month – all of which are claimed for October by the way.
At the very least, I enjoy seeing what other holidays are declared for my birthday. And just so you know, some of those are National Chicken Fried Steak Day, National Tennessee Day, National Mule Day, National Pumpkin Day, and National Financial Crime Fighter Day – to name a few.
Honestly, the only one that I’m interested in is National Pumpkin Day because it’s a birthday tradition for my siblings to join me in carving pumpkins before Halloween.
It’s the one birthday activity that we consistently observe and is always worth the mess it generates.