Don't Forget Rememberance Day

Near the end of the school year I get a Friday off to make the long Memorial Day weekend just a little longer. We call this Friday "In Lieu Of Lincoln's Birthday." Before you go chasing around looking for the proper gift for that occasion, or which state and federal offices are closed: don't. It's a fabrication. It's a way to tack on a little extra time for good behavior. As we all know, February is chock full of holidays, and even in a leap year there are precious few work days. If we had George Washington's birthday and Honest Abe's, we might as well phone the whole month in. But ask any teacher or any kid if they would rather just knock out that last few days of school and skip right on to summer vacation, and you'll find plenty of support sticking it out in lieu of the In Lieu day.
Which brings me to today: Veterans Day. We celebrate the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month because it commemorates the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. You remember the War To End All Wars. The one that started the oh-so-fashionable trend of numbering armed conflicts. It became a national holiday in 1938, just a few years before we discovered that World War was an inevitability. In 1953 it was decided that remembering just the Armistice was insufficient, given the number of veterans we had generated as a nation since then. Hence we have the expanded Veterans Day. In the seventies the Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved it back to the fourth Monday in October. That made it easier to take a long weekend, and to sell more mattresses, but in 1978 Veterans Day returned to eleven-eleven. Banks, some schools and local government offices remain open, not out of disrespect but for continuity's sake. Taking a Wednesday off takes the edge off an otherwise productive work week.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the chance for an extra hour of sleep, followed by a day of remembrance and household chores. But I've got a notion that if I was offered a chance to staple that day on to my Thanksgiving break in a couple of weeks, I would probably jump at the chance. In lieu of trying to figure out what to do with myself for a day.