3. Presidents’ Day （Washington’s Birthday）

As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and as the first president of the United States, George Washington has always played an important role in American literature and legend. People started celebrating his birthday while he was still alive, particularly during his two terms as president （1789-96）. But they usually held their observances on February 11. The date wasn’t shifted to February 22 until 1796, some years after the New Style or Gregorian calendar was adopted.

Richmond, Virginia, was the first town to sponsor a public celebration of George Washington’s birthday, in 1782. The observance of Washington’s Birthday didn’t really take hold until 1832, the centennial of his birth. One of the most memorable celebrations was held in Los Angeles in 1850. The town’s leading citizens decided to mark the occasion with a fancy ball, but some of the community’s less refined members were excluded. They retaliated by firing a cannon into the ballroom, killing several men and wounding others.

While the third Monday in February is observed as Washington’s Birthday by the federal government and most states, some combine it with the February birthday of another famous American president, Abraham Lincoln, calling it Washington-Lincoln Day or Presidents’ Day. Today it is primarily a commercial event, as store owners take advantage of the holiday weekend to empty their shelves of midwinter stock.

Cherry Tree

Stories about George Washington’s precocious adolescence were largely the invention of his biographers. Probably the most popular is the legend of how he chopped down one of his father’s cherry trees and then owned up to his mistake by saying to his father, “I cannot tell a lie.” There appears to be no historic basis for this tale, which first appeared in the 1806 edition of The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington , by Parson Mason Weems. The cherry tree, along with the hatchet that chopped it down, has nevertheless come to represent the honesty and forthrightness for which Washington was revered. Ironically, this and the otherpopular legend concerning George Washington—how he threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River—are remembered today primarily by merchandisers. Their advertisements often employ phrases like, “We’re chopping our prices for you!” or “Silver Dollar Days” to lure shoppers into America’s malls during the holiday weekend.