By nature I am reductionist instead of activist, so I generally pause before advocating ambitious legislative plans. But sometimes making government smaller requires significant action.
Having just come from a meeting where some low-level federal bureaucrats were asking me about the impact of a proposed new program, to which I kept answering "I'm not certain, but I am certain not funding it would save you the amount of money you've proposed to spend" for an hour, I feel I can indulge a bit and lobby for at least one new bill (it is exhausting trying to beat back the inertia of government waste).
Congress should draft, consider, and pass a bill consolidating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents Day, and Columbus Day into one holiday.
It will never happen, just like the Department of Agriculture will never admit subsidies are a colossal disaster and NASA will never come clean that innovation from the space program would have been less expensive if discovered by the private sector (to be discussed in a later post), but one can hope, yes?
So here is the proposal, and the reasoning behind it.
None of these three holidays unite all of us. If we are going to have any federal holidays at all then they should be agreed upon by all, and bring us together (I can see an argument for no federal holidays, on two grounds: one, as a private market actor, I should make my own choices about what to celebrate and when to work; two, there is no express grant in the Constitution for such authority). Assuming there will be federal holidays though, they should unite us based on some common cultural element.
Shared customs- not forced, Progressive faux-traditons like planting a tree on Arbor Day or riding a bike to work on Earth Day- are what make a national holiday.
The other seven federal holidays do this. Perhaps the best way to review is to simply go down the list.
Here is a review of the ten official federal holidays, with comments.
New Years Day is an irreligious, temporal holiday. The calendar is not contentious- pretty much everyone has come around to the Gregorian version (unless you are in North Korea, in which case once every 52 weeks you make Juche Year's Resolutions).
We have customs: excessive drinking, a Scottish song no one really knows, gym memberships, and Dick Clark.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by many measures took a long time to get in place. Some 120 years after the 14th Amendment, Congress finally took time to celebrate a black American leader. But there are legitimate questions about whether King merited the holiday. Was he superior to Frederick Douglas in his achievements as a black American? Was it premature to create a holiday for a man who had died only a generation before? (Even Washington's Birthday, the initial name for Presidents Day, came into effect only some seventy years after the Father of Our Country had died.) There is dispute here, unfounded or not. It is not a holiday that universally brings us together- and compelling reverence through an act of Congress is perhaps not the solution.
There are no traditions here.
Presidents Day deserves a similar line of questioning to the one put to MLK Jr. Day: is this the right person (or persons, in this case, as Presidents Day rather ambiguously celebrates the birthdays of both Washington and Lincoln) to be remembered with a holiday? The other objection is the deification of any single individual- particularly an elected leader, especially the executive. Should any person rate a holiday? Go to any Third World hell hole with a long serving dictator and ask the man on the street when is the president's birthday- they will know. Then go to the US of Government Ain't that Important of A and ask the same question. Life in America does not revolve around the guy with the sash over his shoulder and photos hung from public buildings.
On Presidents Day it is customary to shop for furniture.
Memorial Day is a solemn day to remember our war dead. It is a unifying, irreligious national day and certainly deserves a holiday.
On Memorial Day we visit our cemeteries, reflect on losses, and contemplate our good fortune granted by the sacrifice of others.
Independence Day is our national day and without question should be the most important holiday.
On the 4th it is our tradition to shoot fireworks, watch baseball, and listen to Kelly Clarkson sing the national anthem.
Labor Day is a holiday steeped in socialist tradition, but I am not as critical of it as the three which celebrate individuals. Say what you will about Labor Day, but anyone who works, which is most of the country outside of the Upper West Side and the 10% who are currently enjoying the "economic recovery," take and enjoy the day. It is a universally celebrated holiday that originally was imagined as a day to rally workers against the man but has basically evolved into a day to just relax at the end of summer. Ironically, Labor Day is enjoyed as much by the man, middle managers at the beach and accountants flipping burgers in their backyards, as it is the longshoremen and machinists for whom it was first drafted.
In addition to the beach and burgers already mentioned, on Labor Day we have furniture sales (it is interesting to note that this holiday is likely the weakest of the ones I favor keeping in terms of traditions- perhaps because originally, as with Arbor Day and Earth Day, this holiday was born of Progressivism and never really stuck. As I noted though, it has evolved into an end of summer holiday, not a political statement).
Columbus Day is a holiday to celebrate a guy who was never an American, never touched America, and, at least indirectly, started a chain reaction which killed a lot of people. It is on the calendar because Italians lobbied for it. It would be like having a Pizarro Day because the Spanish wanted it. Only there are not a lot of Spanish voters in the US.
We celebrate Columbus Day by not doing any banking.
Veteran's Day is a day to thank the men and women who served in the military.
We have a tradition of parades on Veteran's Day.
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday to pause and thank the Creator for our good fortune. It is also the day FDR moved around on the calendar to increase consumer spending during the Great Depression, which gives an idea of the value of holidays as political tools. It unites us as much for its spiritual purpose, which is vague and not even clearly Christian, as it does for its role as our harvest festival- a custom nearly every nation possesses.
On Thanksgiving we eat turkey, watch football, and prepare for the shopping season ahead.
Christmas is the big one, and much has been written on the ascension and descent and reascension of Christmas from pagan to Christian to secular holiday in America. Evangelicals object to the removal of the celebration of Christ from the "holiday" season, but the reality is nearly all Americans, Christian or non-Christian, celebrate Christmas to some degree. (Of note: Easter, generally accepted as the most important holiday in the Christian calendar is not a federal holiday.)
Christmas is the time many of us go to church, some of us decorate trees, and nearly all of us enjoy the decorations.
MLK Jr.Day, Presidents Day, and Columbus Day should be consolidated into one holiday.
These three holidays are improper, on one level, because they celebrate individuals. Additionally, they are divisive. Unlike holidays that grew from the desire of the people to celebrate them, these holidays were the consequence of special interest groups. It took government interference to create these three days. Families celebrate Good Friday and Yum Kippur and Groundhog Day on their own because these celebrations are important to them. Very few people, even with government orders to comply, celebrate Presidents Day, beyond taking the day off and wondering that of the three holidays they are supposed to be enjoying.
Lastly, holidays are expensive, so we need to keep their numbers in check. I am too lazy to go to Wikipedia and check, but I know in my lifetime at least one federal holiday has been created. I would wager the trend line for federal holidays has been consistently up since the formation of the country.
Near its collapse the Roman Empire had a state mandated holiday almost once per week. It was an attempt to placate the frustrated masses- many of who were frustrated in the first place by a lack of government resources, since the state was already overextended- with a day off of work. A rather poor way to encourage productivity and government revenues.
We have a similar situation in America. The government is broke and a day off of work without pay is a drain on national productivity. (Might this be a prediction? That should these economic doldrums continue, we would be given a holiday to keep us happy? September 11 would seem a natural and proper choice, but the federal government so often acts irrationally. Henry Paulson's Birthday would work nicely. He was born at the end of March, so it could be parlayed in to a TARP-Easter weekend, in celebration of how the Enlightened One saved us all from economic doom.).
I propose to get rid of MLK Jr. Day, Presidents Day, and Columbus Day.
As stated, this is politically untenable, so here is a creative solution.
Create a new national holiday in place of the other three, and make it one that appeals to many voters.
Valentine's Day should be a national holiday.
We can switch three for one and generate billions more each year in productivity. And a good percentage of Americans would prefer that Valentine's Day be a national holiday. For one, many people are not given the day off on any of the three People Days. But Valentine's Day is a day of the people, and nearly everyone celebrates it to some degree. The holiday has firm, existing, wonderful traditions- even for the lonely (single men go to brothels; single women watch HBO).
There is a similar day, March 8, in the former Eastern Bloc, called International Women's Day. It is another example of where the state tried to impose Progressive ideals on the people, but the people again reverted to their tradition. Today it is, despite the calls for equality and gender neutral government contracts, basically about romantic love and respect for maternal figures. People insist on a day like this, be they in America or Armenia.
Valentine's Day is a de facto national, unofficial holiday in America.
As much as I am concerned that the federal government has no authority to create holidays, replacing three contentious, problematic holidays with a single, universally celebrated day would be an improvement.
A lovely one.