As you may have seen advertised, today is the day to buy a new car. Hearing a commercial with a modernized rendition of "Hail to the Chief" for the twentieth time (in one day, nonetheless), my husband and I began to wonder how, exactly, Presidents' Day became the unofficial “Buy a New Car Day.” I found an interesting article on the National Archives website. Titled "By George, IT IS Washington's Birthday!", it originally appeared in Prologue Magazine in 2004. In the article, author C.L. Arblebide, a historian and storyteller specializing in federal holiday history, discusses the transformation of the holiday from an unofficial celebration of George Washington's birthday on February 22 to Presidents' Day on the third Monday of February.
In 1968, Congress proposed a bill that would institute uniform Monday holidays in order to foster family togetherness and, probably more important to government and business leaders, "improve commercial and industrial production by minimizing midweek holiday interruptions of production schedules and reducing employee absenteeism before and after midweek holidays." This bill stirred up controversy; many did not want to move the holidays. One of its proponents was Rep. Robert McClory, a Republican from Illinois. He wanted to change the name of the holiday to Presidents' Day to honor Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was earlier in the month. The choice of the third Monday in February meant that the holiday could fall close to Lincoln's birthday and never on Washington’s, and when the law was implemented in 1971, the holiday fell three days after Lincoln's birthday. Although the Monday holiday law passed, the name change did not. The federal holiday remained George Washington's Birthday, although some states observed Lincoln's birthday as well.
How do the car sales fit in? According to the article:
For advertisers, the Monday holiday change was the goose that laid the golden "promotional" egg. Using Labor Day marketing as a guide, three-day weekend sales were expanded to include the new Monday holidays. Once the "Uniform Monday Holiday Law" was implemented, it took just under a decade to build a head of national promotional sales steam.
Local advertisers morphed both "Abraham Lincoln's Birthday" and "George Washington's Birthday" into the sales sound bite "President's Day," expanding the traditional three-day sales to begin before Lincoln's birth date and end after Washington's February 22 birth. In some instances, advertisers promoted the sales campaign through the entire month of February. To the unsuspecting public, the term linking both presidential birthdays seemed to explain the repositioning of the holiday between two high-profile presidential birthdays.
After a decade of local sporadic use, the catchall phrase took a national turn. By the mid-1980s, the term was appearing in a few Washington Post holiday advertisements and an occasional newspaper editorial....
Advertising had its effects on various calendar manufacturers who, determining their own spelling, began substituting Presidents' Day for the real thing.
So, the sales have nothing to do with Presidents' Day per se. They are a marketing strategy based on the three-day weekend. It is evident from the article, which you can read by clicking here, that Arblebide laments the fact that most of us associate the holiday with sales rather than with George Washington.
Source
Arbelbide, C.L. "By George, IT IS Washington's Birthday!" Prologue Magazine vol. 36, no. 4 (Winter 2004) printed on The National Archives http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/winter/gw-birthday-2.html (accessed February 16, 2006).