replace july 4th with independence day weekend?

this was the first year in my life, i believe, in which i was both in the working world AND had july 4th fall on a wednesday, with no other day off during the week besides that wednesday. this post is an argument for how much that sucked and what we should do to avoid this from ever happening again.

july 4th is my second favorite holiday of the year behind thanksgiving. being with friends and family and having good food is the name of the game for both holidays, and that's what i love about both of them.

so i was listening to a sports talk show on monday morning (mike and mike in the morning on espn2), and greenberg made the following argument upon which i am now going to coopt and improve.

first off, i realize this only comes up every so often. in fact, the issue only arises when july 4th falls on a wednesday. if july 4 is monday or friday, you already have a long weekend, and if it's a tuesday or thursday, it's not only tolerated but it's pretty much socially acceptable to take off on the monday or friday, and many employers will even give you these days off as freebies.

greenberg's argument was that we make "independence day" the first thursday of the month of july every year and let people take the friday off as well. that is almost perfect, and i'm going to improve upon it just a little bit more. the point is to make sure we can expect a 4 day weekend to celebrate the birth of our nation, see our friends and family, and have great cookouts with corn, burgers, dogs, and fireworks EACH AND EVERY YEAR.

yes, in my mind, the actual day of july 4th on the calendar is a very special day, but most years, this would fall within this new 4 day holiday weekend where the first thursday of july starts off the independence day weekend. if someone could come up with some kind of statistics for this, that would be great. i would venture to say that july 4th would fall on this new 4 day holiday weekend 90 % of the time. my alternative to greenberg's idea is that if july 1st falls on a thursday, making july 4th on the sunday, we could change it up so that we have friday and monday off.

that is the new rule that georgie is proposing: "independence day weekend" starts the first thursday of the month of july except when july 1 is a thursday, in which case friday and monday become national holidays.

who's on board?