Federal holidays in the United States
federal holiday recognized by the Government of the USA
Federal holidays in the United States are 11 calendar dates designated by the U.S. federal government as holidays. On these days non-essential U.S. federal government offices are closed, and federal employees are paid for the day off.
Federal holidays are designated by the United States Congress in Title V of the United States Code (5 U.S.C. § 6103). Congress only has authority to create holidays for federal institutions (including federally-owned properties), employees, and the District of Columbia. As a general rule of courtesy, custom, and sometimes regulation, other institutions, such as banks, businesses, schools, and the financial markets, may be closed on federal holidays. In various parts of the country, state and city holidays may be observed concurrently with federal holidays.
History
The history of national holidays in the United States dates back to June 28, 1870, when Congress created national holidays "to correspond with similar laws of States around the District...and...in every State of the Union." Although at first applicable only to federal employees in Washington, D.C., Congress extended coverage in 1885 to all federal employees.
The original four holidays in 1870 were:
New Year's Day
Independence Day
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Day
New Years Day celebrates the beginning of the new calendar year on January 1. The July 4th Independence Day commemorates the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776.
On October 3, 1789, at the request of the U.S. Congress, President George Washington issued a Thanksgiving proclamation designating November 26, 1789 as a day of "public thanksgiving and prayer" for the "People of the United States".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Federal holidays in the United States” is federal holiday recognized by the Government of the USA. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Federal, holidays and United, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5440532. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1870, 1885, 1776 and 1789.
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This entry incorporates text from “Federal holidays in the United States” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.