Wisch: Make Super Bowl Monday A Federal Holiday
By Dave Wischnowsky –
(CBS) Happy Super Bowl Monday, Chicago.
Yes, it's the day after the night when it seemed like a great idea to eat those three extra bowls of chili, drink those four extra beers and stay out perhaps five hours too late with 20 of your best friends.
And, hey, you know, it probably was a great idea.
That is, until you had to get up for work this morning.
Now, if you're anything like me, then you're probably super tired today following last night's Super Bowl. And you really didn't want to get out of bed when your alarm started waking the dead at dawn.
So, what if you didn't have to?
What if Super Bowl Monday was a federal holiday? And you could just sleep in, never change out of your pigskin pajamas and lounge around watching Super Bowl commercials on YouTube all day long?
I know I'm not alone in dreaming this dream, as others have been making the case for it, as well. The website, GoPetition.com, for example, features a petition that proposes the establishment of a formal day of rest on the Monday after the Super Bowl.
And, really, it does make sense. After all, for all intents and purposes, Super Bowl Sunday has already become a national holiday in this country. Heck, when you consider the millions of people who gathered together last night and the mountains of food that they consumed, the day is now pretty much a Thanksgiving in February.
Minus the Detroit Lions, of course.
And we do get the day after Thanksgiving off from work, right?
Last year, according to GoPetition.com, 1.5 million Americans didn't show up for work the day after the Super Bowl, and an estimated 4.4 million people showed up late. The petition states that, "With all that partying and late night carousing on Sunday, Mondays after the Super Bowl become one of the least productive work days of the year."
For those of you who needed a shot of 5-Hour Energy just five minutes after arriving at the office today, you can probably vouch for that.
And as a remedy, I'm here today – albeit reluctantly, as I'd rather be napping – to propose an easy way to make this holiday happen: Simply move Presidents Day from the third Monday in February to the first Monday after the Super Bowl.
I mean, really, why not?
As a bit of a history lesson, Presidents' Day – also known as Washington's Birthday – was first established by Congress in 1880 to honor our first president's birthday. But since 1971, when it was moved by the government to this month's third Monday, the holiday has always fallen between February 15 and 21. That means it never lands on Washington's actual birthday, February 22.
Every year since 2004, the Super Bowl has fallen during the first week of February (rather than its previous customary date in January), meaning the holiday and Super Bowl Monday could make for the perfect marriage.
North Carolina resident Eric Stoddard, who was interviewed last week by the Raleigh News & Observer, agrees.
"We got a lot of holidays for bad reasons," he said. "We got silly holidays you've never heard of. Let's have a Super Bowl (holiday). That's American."
Now, not everyone gets Presidents' Day off from work, of course. And even if the holiday was moved to the Monday after the Super Bowl, not every business would have to close their doors to honor it. But it sure would be nice to have the option, wouldn't it?
And before anyone tells me that tying Presidents' Day to the Super Bowl together somehow diminishes the meaning of the holiday, I'd first ask you to tell me how.
Presidents' Day has become mostly known for stores – especially car dealerships – to hold blowout sales, not for a day to sit around and just ponder the guys who worked in the Oval Office. And, really, as Eric Stoddard pointed out, what is more American than football and what's wrong with showing it some celebration, too?
This year, Presidents' Day will fall on Monday, Feb. 20.
But, man, it sure would be nice if it fell two weeks earlier.
If nothing else, Dave Wischnowsky is an Illinois boy. Raised in Bourbonnais, educated at the University of Illinois and bred on sports in the Land of Lincoln, he now resides on Chicago's North Side, just blocks from Wrigley Field. Formerly a reporter and blogger for the Chicago Tribune, Dave currently writes a syndicated column, The Wisch List, which you can check out via his blog at http://www.wischlist.com. Follow him on Twitter @wischlist and read more of his CBS Chicago blog entries here.
