National Holidays Explained

A national holiday is created when someone or multiple people send a registration for said holiday to the president or the person in charge of where they live. The person in charge then talks it over with the members of congress to see if it is eligible to be an official national holiday. If they feel your reasoning for wanting to create that holiday is good enough then they’ll add it to the calendar making it an official holiday. However, if they don’t find your reasoning compelling enough they simply won’t add it to the calendar, but I’m not sure if you'll be notified if your idea was put on the calendar or not.

A national holiday is something celebrated nationwide rather than worldwide such as Christmas or New Years. Those holidays are more federal holidays and you get days off of work and school for them; since it isn’t mandatory for schools or jobs to give you time off for holidays like Valentines Day or Halloween, then they aren’t really federal holidays. Not everyone celebrates Halloween and Valentines Day everywhere, and as you know work and schools don’t usually give you breaks for those holidays. Some holidays are more famous or well known than others are, however, we celebrate a lot of holidays not knowing most of them are just national not federal holidays.

Christmas, New Years and Memorial Day are known as federal holidays. Now you may be asking what a federal holiday is, and what makes it different from a national holiday. A federal holiday is one that is not only recognized by congress but also is in the U.S. code titled as V. This means that these holidays are legal and public holidays, everyone is aware of them and most celebrate them. Since they are legal and public holidays under the title V in the U.S code, it’s mandatory for the U.S to give people breaks from jobs and schools. The difference between a federal and national holiday is that as mentioned above a federal holiday is recognized by the government, which leads to mandatory time off. National holidays have a similar definition, however the government doesn’t make it mandatory to give you time off from school or jobs.

Ultimately, the only huge difference between the two are the mandatory time off, and the amount of people who celebrate them. Fun fact, January have a bunch of fun and cool national holidays, infact January 19th is national popcorn day. So grab your friends or family and celebrate with some popcorn and a movie, and heres a calendar if you curious about other national holidays.

By Audrieauna Brown
Roosevelt High School

Published January 19th, 2023