Yesterday was Presidents Day in the United States, a federal holiday intended to celebrate all the presidents of this proud republic - or so I thought until I went away to check where the apostrophe goes in "Presidents Day" and discovered that not only is there no agreement on the inclusion or placement of the apostrophe, but that it isn't even the official name of the holiday. According to the relevant federal law the holiday celebrates the birthday of George Washington, and although a number of states have it on their books as Presidents Day (with varying punctuation and ambiguous meaning) it is only convention that establishes the name nationwide.
This is just one of the perplexing things about American holidays. In New Zealand the the public holidays are, if not exactly mandatory, then delivered with a strong hint from the labour laws that everyone gets the day off. Here there are a number of federal holidays - but those are technically only holidays for federal government workers. The individual states declare their own state holidays, many of which coincide with the federal ones, but again these only technically apply to state government workers. By convention at least some of those holidays are also taken by workers in the private sector, though your mileage may vary. Mrs Walles, for one, did not get the day off yesterday.
There are a few holidays, like Independence Day and Thanksgiving that seem sacrosanct, but the rest often fall by the wayside. There's little motivation to mark a holiday which isn't really a holiday, so you forget and treat it like just another day. Which is all well and good until you go down to the post office with that urgent parcel...
