Presidents’ Day or President’s Day? Depends

Happy Presidents’ Day! Or is it President’s Day? Or Presidents Day?

Whether — and how — to punctuate the holiday that falls on the third Monday in February is a real apostrophe catastrophe. And the answer depends on whom you ask and sometimes where you live.

Go ahead and Google “Presidents Day” and the search engine — considered by many people to be an authoritative source — will tell you Monday is “President’s Day.” But the Associated Press stylebook, the rule-setter for English-speaking journalists around the world, says it’s Presidents Day. And my Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, has an entry for Presidents’ Day.

How did we get into this mess, anyway?

Let’s start with a little history. The holiday doesn’t actually exist — at least not on the federal level. To the United States government, the day off that many people get in February is for Washington’s Birthday, created by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which was passed in 1968 and took effect in 1971. That’s why many people over the age of 40 remember having separate days off of school for Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday.

Ironically, the holiday Washington’s Birthday never can fall on George Washington’s actual birthday, Feb. 22, because the third Monday always will be between Feb. 15 and 21. Now,

Ironically, the holiday Washington’s Birthday never can fall on George Washington’s actual birthday, Feb. 22, because the third Monday always will be between Feb. 15 and 21.

there was a proposal at the time to rename the holiday Presidents’ Day, but that didn’t make it into the final bill. Rep. William Moore McCulloch of Ohio argued that perhaps we wouldn’t want to pay tribute to all presidents. (And you could say that argument is as relevant now as it was in Vietnam-torn 1968.)

But it was a free-for-all at the state and local level. Some states have Presidents’ Day as a holiday; others use President’s Day. And it’s easy to find inconsistencies within departments in the same state.

California officially avoids the whole mess, with the state code referring to an unspecified holiday on the third Monday in February. The state’s department of human resources, though, goes with Presidents’ Day. If you look at the California DMV’s website, however, you’ll get a message that its offices are closed on President’s Day.

In the run-up to the holiday, the city of San Jose sent out a release announcing offices would be closed President’s Day. A few days later, the county of Santa Clara delivered the same message, but for Presidents’ Day. It’s no shock that those two disagree.

Retailers — whose three-day sales weekends were a driving force behind the creation of the Monday holiday anyway — tend to drop the apostrophe, probably for the same reason Twitter users leave it off: It takes up less space. Grammatically, that makes it — like Veterans Day — a descriptive instead of a singular or plural possessive.

After my wife, Amy, and I had a rollicking breakfast discussion about the matter, I opened it up on Facebook, where the response was large and varied. Bill Sheehy, one of my English teachers at Santa Teresa High forever ago, says the apostrophe goes after the “s.” Most people agreed, though my wife was leading a “no apostrophe” faction, and I’m with her. Former Saratoga Mayor Chuck Page took a diplomatic route, saying you should let your personal beliefs — does it honor one, two or multiple presidents? — be your guide.

The truth is that it doesn’t really matter, and there are certainly more pressing — and less confusing — topics to occupy our thoughts these days. But there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun on a holiday — as long as you don’t ask me how to punctuate it.