When I was a child, Lincoln’s birthday was a legal holiday in the state of California, and it always made perfect sense to me.

Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, the man who led the country through the Civil War, which ended slavery. One of only two guys in competition for “greatest U.S. president” — the other of course being George Washington.

Now, Lincoln’s birthday is sorta slapped together with Washington’s birthday for a holiday California celebrates on the third Monday of February.

Lincoln’s birthday is just another day, now.

But I think Lincoln and Washington deserve their own days.

Granted, it was a little weird. We would have February 12 off from school, and then we would have February 22, as well. The first being Lincoln’s birthday and the second Washington’s.

When Martin Luther King Jr. Day was put on the holiday calendar, in 1983, rather than give government workers, etc., another day off … the two presidential birthdays became something generally known as Presidents Day — but which has never actually carried that title, as far as the feds are concerned.

Actually, It is not clear what is celebrated, on Presidents Day. Washington, for sure — his name technically is still on the holiday, according to the federal government. But does Lincoln get attached here, too? Or are all presidents celebrated on the third Monday of February — which 1) isn’t actually Washington’s birthday and 2) would include the three or four presidents you think were idiots or scoundrels.

I think we can jettison another federal holiday to get Lincoln his own day. Columbus Day, for example … which celebrates the landing, in 1492, somewhere in the Caribbean, of a guy from the Republic of Genoa (modern Italy), in the employ of the king of Castile, in Spain, who was looking for a shorter route to Asia.

It seems pretty clear Columbus never set foot on anything that became the United States. And the European perspective that Columbus “discovered” the New World ignores that lots and lots of Native Americans were already living in the Americas.

So.

Also, aren’t Memorial Day and Veterans Day pretty much the same holiday? The major difference would be that Memorial Day honors Americans killed in war, while Veterans Day honors everyone who was in the military.

Since the latter holiday also covers those killed in combat, and in practice the two holidays are celebrated almost exactly the same, by Americans, maybe one of those could make way to get Lincoln back on the calendar.

Lincoln matters that much. Without Washington, the U.S. doesn’t exist; without Lincoln, the country would have turned out quite differently — maybe as two countries. Or more. Lincoln also was a great orator particularly skilled at summing up what America and Americans ought to be about. (See: Gettysburg Address.)

I can be talked around to some other holiday giving up its spot on the calendar for Honest Abe. One way or another, Lincoln’s birthday, today, ought to be a U.S. holiday.