WASHINGTON – The United States Postal Service will pause mail delivery next week to observe Presidents’ Day, a national holiday.
The holiday, which stems from national recognition of George Washington’s birthday, will be observed on Monday. There will be no mail delivery, caller service, or post office box service on that day.
All services will resume on Tuesday, February 18.
Customers will still be able to use self-service kiosks at select Post Offices. The ATM-like kiosk, which only accepts debit and credit cards, can handle 80% of retail counter transactions, such as stamp purchases.
Following Washington’s death in 1799, his birthdate of February 22 became a national holiday. The date was not declared a national holiday until 1879, when Congress passed and President Rutherford B. Hayes signed legislation establishing the honor.
At the time, Washington’s Birthday was the first federal bank holiday to commemorate an individual’s life. The only other federal holidays were Christmas, New Year’s Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving.
In the years following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, several states approved observances of his February 12 birthdate.
The shift toward Presidents’ Day began in the 1960s, when Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which moved the celebration of several federal holidays from specific dates to predetermined Mondays.
That law included a provision to combine the celebrations of Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays, as well as a proposal to rename the third Monday in February as Presidents’ Day.
That provision was eventually dropped, but the main component of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, the relocation of holiday observances, was passed in 1968 and went into effect in 1971 following an executive order from President Richard M. Nixon.
