I’ll never turn my nose up at a federal holiday. If you want a holiday to celebrate or recognize someone or some thing, I’ll support you. Juneteenth? Sure. 9/11 Day? Yep. Kwanzaa? I’m in. Lunar New year? Sign me up. I’m happy to take any day off that the brain trust that is the US Congress wants to put on the books. 

I just wish a few more of them would fall between the middle of February and the end of May. 

Washington’s Birthday is always the holiday that hurts most, because it’s the holiday that leads in to the long slog through the spring of the year. In my mind there’s no worse part of the calendar than the stretch from Presidents Day to Memorial Day. It’s three months, a quarter of the year, or about 98 days, with nothing aside from standard issue weekends. Those weekends account for 28 days if you’re trying to do the math in your head.

I know, an extra day here or there doesn’t make a huge difference, but they do serve as helpful marks on the wall. If nothing else, they’re some small point of light to look forward to among the normal grind of spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and event planning. Sure, I could just burn off some of my own vacation days, but they just don’t feel as good as “free” holidays.

I normally try to struggle through the first half of the year without breaking into any of my own days. They make a nice reserve for the back half of the year, when the weather is better and I’m well and truly tired of everyone’s shit. Here in February, it means my normal early June tranche of vacation days still feel like something way out over the horizon. Almost a figment of my imagination. 

So yeah. Call your senators and representative and tell them we absolutely need a few more federal holidays in the mix. Since they can’t figure out how to pass a budget or do any actual programmatic oversight, it feels like the least they could do for us.