{"id":9699,"date":"2014-02-18T15:21:08","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T20:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=9699"},"modified":"2014-05-20T13:23:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T18:23:29","slug":"recognizing-presidents-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2014\/02\/18\/recognizing-presidents-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Recognizing President’s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"centerpiece\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With President\u2019s Day on Feb 17, some may wonder what the holiday means or why it is significant. To help, the Clarion spoke with John Weaver, chair of the History department, and Charles Curran, a professor in the Political Science department about why we recognize the Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people call it President\u2019s Day, but actually the official name of it is Washington\u2019s Birthday,\u201d Weaver said. \u201cThat\u2019s what the holiday really is, to honor President George Washington, and the reason that it\u2019s called President\u2019s Day is because it always falls on the third Monday of February, which always falls between the time of Lincoln\u2019s birthday, and Washington\u2019s birthday \u2026 It has become a day to honor all presidents.<\/p>\n

He added that Washington was the nation\u2019s first president and the general that led the U.S. army during the revolutionary war, which established the country\u2019s independence from Great Britain.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe refused to use the fact that he was so popular to take power as a dictator, some people actually thought Washington should have completely taken power because the country was in bad shape after the revolution, but he wouldn\u2019t do that because he did not believe that we should become some kind of military dictatorship,\u201d Weaver said. \u201cAnd when the constitution was written, he was the presiding officer at the constitutional convention, and supported the constitution, and was unanimously chosen to be the first president.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said after he became president, he got involved in political issues, and people began to divide based on whether they supported his policies.<\/p>\n

However, although political parties arose, Washington was still voted to serve a second term.<\/p>\n

Although the holiday is meant to be a recognition for George Washington, Curran feels that it should be used to celebrate all presidents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you go back into the 19 century, they had individual President\u2019s Days, now it\u2019s all meshed into one. I think, in my personal opinion, there was greater reverence for those holidays and to the roles that those those chief executive officers played in American history. I think today it\u2019s kind of a blur,\u201d Curran said. \u201cAbout the only people who celebrate President\u2019s Day are the political parties. They usually use them as a basis for raising money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weaver said Abraham Lincoln was also an excellent leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people today realize just how great of a president Lincoln was, and that he was determined to end slavery. I think Lincoln did believe slavery was morally wrong, but he believed it could only be ended through a slow, careful process,\u201d Weaver said.<\/p>\n

He added that Lincoln led a rather sad life; his marriage to Mary Todd Lincoln was stormy, the war weighed heavily on his shoulders, he was accused of being a bad leader and two of his sons passed away.<\/p>\n

Curran said the current political parties use President\u2019s Day as a way to raise funds for their political interests.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth the democratic and the republican parties in our area are planning what are called Lincoln Day Dinners,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if you\u2019re democratic, Jefferson Jackson Day Dinners. That\u2019s about the extent of the celebration that I\u2019m personally aware of, beyond that I think it plays a pretty minor role. Certainly the holidays were more visible, but I think it\u2019s largely played down a great deal today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With President\u2019s Day on Feb 17, some may wonder what the holiday means or why it is significant. To help, the Clarion spoke with John Weaver, chair of the History department, and Charles Curran, a professor in the Political Science department about why we recognize the Day. \u201cMost people call it President\u2019s Day, but actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-2wr","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9700,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699\/revisions\/9700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}