It’s Abraham Lincoln’s 206th birthday today, (click here) but you wouldn’t know it by watching the number of states that observe the day as a paid holiday....
...So on February 12, Lincoln’s real birthday, there are a handful of celebrations on a state level, along with a ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. There is also a wreath ceremony at Lincoln’s birthplace in Kentucky.
Lincoln really was born in a one-room log cabin, on Sinking Spring Farm near present-day Hodgenville, Kentucky. (The original cabin was destroyed by the time of Lincoln’s death in 1865.)
There were efforts right after Lincoln’s death to get this birthday recognized as a holiday, but there has never been a federal Lincoln-birthday holiday.
By 1890, Lincoln’s birthday was observed as a paid holiday in 10 states. According to one blog that tracks the holiday, in 1940 24 states and the District Of Columbia observed Lincoln’s Birthday.
Now, after the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was passed in 1971 and states moved toward considering the federal Washington-birthday holiday as Presidents Day, there are just a handful of states that honor Lincoln directly.
