President Trump Expands Christmas to 3 Day Federal Holiday

Thanks to President Trump, federal workers will have an extended Christmas holiday this year.

In an executive order signed on Thursday, President Trump declared:

In recent years, depending upon what day of the week Christmas falls, presidents have made similar pronouncements. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush declared Christmas Eve a half-day for federal employees. In 1997, President Clinton declared Friday December 26^th a federal holiday. Presidents George W. Bush, Obama and Biden added to the Christmas holiday, too. During his first term, President Trump either declared Christmas Eve or the day after a federal holiday – but not both.

Yet, it might surprise you to learn that Christmas hasn’t always been widely celebrated in America – and sometimes not at all.

In fact, we credit the Pilgrims with popularizing the celebration of Thanksgiving, but that same year they refused to celebrate Christmas. In the wake of the English Revolution, the Puritans rebelled against King Charles I and cancelled any public acknowledgement of Jesus’ birthday.

In 1867, a Massachusetts minister named Increase Mather pointed out that the pagans were responsible for Christians celebrating Christmas on December 25.“Christ was not born in that Month, but because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”

The “Puritan War on Christmas” resulted in all kinds of controversy and even arrests for those who tried to celebrate. It only fully abated after Christmas was designated a federal holiday in 1870. Up until that point, many businesses and stores remained open and life for many on December 24^th and 25^th was no different than it was on December 26^th or 27^th. Even schools kept going in New England states during Christmas.

Representative Burton Chauncey Cook of Illinois is credited with introducing the bill to federalize Christmas. In the aftermath of the Civil War, officials were eager to find ways to unify the country. President Ulysses Grant signed the holiday into law on June 28, 1870.

In an increasingly secularized country, it’s not an insignificant development that the President of the United States is setting aside three full days to celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

Whether the holiday commemorating the greatest story ever told about the greatest man who ever lived should receive one, two, three or even more days might be a matter of personal opinion and conviction. But we can all agree that the Incarnation was a miraculous, world-shaking event that not only changed everything – but has hopefully changed you, too.