What is celebrated and what is the origin of this American holiday?

(CNN) — This Monday is Presidents Day and George Washington’s birthday. But is it really so?

Americans did not celebrate the birthday of the nation’s first president on his actual birth date in more than 50 years. Instead, Presidents’ Day is celebrated in the United States on the third Monday of February.

This is the explanation.

Washington’s Two Birth Dates

Would you like to celebrate your birthday twice in a month? Washington did it during his presidency.

He was born on February 11, 1732, according to the Julian calendar then in use. But that changed when England and its colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. His birthday was changed to February 22.

In the Gregorian calendar, a day is added to the calendar every four years to synchronize with the solar year. We know that extra day as a leap day.

Between 1789 and 1797 Americans celebrated Washington’s birthday on both dates.

All this changed 100 years later.

Law on Monday Public Holidays

In 1968, Congress debated whether the birthday celebrations of Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who was born on February 12, should be called Presidents’ Day.

But legislators in Virginia, Washington’s home state, opposed it and the effort failed. However, Congress approved the Holiday Monday Act that year.

This law placed most of the nation’s holidays on Mondays, so that Americans rarely had a three-day weekend.

Eventually, the bill went into effect in 1971, and the celebration of Washington’s birthday was moved from February 22 to the third Monday in February.

But still Not all states Celebrate Presidents Day.

Virginia still calls it Washington Day; Alabama calls it Washington Day, and Jefferson and Montana call it Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays.