Time until Presidents' Day

The federal holiday on the third Monday in February is still called Washington's Birthday in law, even though almost everyone says Presidents' Day. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved it off 22 February in 1971, with the side effect that the holiday can now never fall on Washington's actual birthday: the third Monday always lands between the 15th and the 21st. States differ on whether they also honour Lincoln, and a few use different names entirely.

For most people the practical content of the day is a sale and a day off school. Federal offices, banks and the markets close while retail is at its busiest, and furniture, appliance and car promotions have used the weekend for decades. Schools in the northeast often attach a full week of winter break to it, which makes flights and ski accommodation expensive for that stretch of February. Several states keep their own version under a different name or with a different scope, and a few do not observe it at all. Lincoln's birthday on 12 February and Washington's on the 22nd sit either side of the holiday without being it, which is where most of the confusion about the day comes from. Mail is not delivered and the federal courts are closed.

Alabama attaches Thomas Jefferson's name to the same Monday, Virginia calls it George Washington Day, and a handful of states ignore it entirely and keep their offices open. The date itself rests on a calendar change: Washington was born on 11 February 1731 by the Julian calendar then used across the British Empire, and once Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752 the date was restated as 22 February 1732, the year having begun in March until then. So the birthday the holiday is named for had already been moved once before the Monday rule moved it again.

The next one falls on Monday, 15 February 2027, and this page counts down to the midnight that starts it in whatever time zone your browser reports.

One old observance survives in the Senate, where a member reads Washington's Farewell Address aloud in the chamber each February. The practice began in 1862 during the Civil War and has been kept up since; the reader alternates between the parties and signs a leather-bound book afterwards. The address warns against permanent foreign alliances, against the spirit of party and against sectional feeling, which means it has usually been read out in the years it was least likely to be heeded.

The other survival is commercial. February was a slow retail month and a holiday in the middle of it was useful, so furniture, appliance and car promotions attached themselves to the weekend from the 1970s onwards and have not let go since; the mattress advertisement is the standing joke about the day. Alexandria, Virginia, where Washington lived and is buried nearby, runs a parade through the old town on the Monday and is one of the few places keeping a programme with any connection to the man.