WHY ABRAHAM LINCOLN INVENTED PRESIDENT'S DAY, AND WHAT IT IS TODAY.
Presidents Day, Presidents' Day, and President's Day is the informal name of a holiday held in many areas of United States that celebrates any or all US Presidents. It is held on the third Monday in February, the same day as the federal holiday Washington's Birthday.

On February 19, 1862, with armies drilling for the spring Civil War campaigning season, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation. “It is recommended,” he wrote, “to the People of the United States that they assemble in their customary places for public solemnities on the twenty-second day of February instant, and celebrate the anniversary of the Birthday of the Father of his Country, by causing to be read to them his immortal Farewell address.” That was all.

Lincoln didn’t say anything about “sale-a-brations” or “Buy George” savings on dinette sets. He certainly didn’t realize that through the years his original concept of a near sacred holiday for the reading of Washington’s most succinct manifesto would blur into a meaningless thing, a Monday without mail called Presidents Day.

It is safe to say that neither Washington nor Lincoln could ever have imagined the extent to which their likenesses would become commercialized.

George Washington’s life did have meaning for Lincoln. While the sixteenth President may have had other, more direct political role models, such as Henry Clay and Zachary Taylor, Washington was an idol who loomed on all levels. One day in Springfield a bunch of friends just shooting the bull settled on the topic of the first President and inconsistencies in his character. Lincoln turned the conversation back before it even started.

 “Let us believe, as in the days of our youth, that Washington was spotless. It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect—that human perfection is possible.”

If that smacks of religious fervor and a compelling need for faith, it is probably because Lincoln’s attitude toward the nation and the community of belief that sustained it did rise to the level of a political religion, as he once termed it. The public didn’t greet the notion of a political religion with much excitement, though, and so Lincoln stopped trying to explain it early on. But he continued to live it. Read More about it.