Robert E. Lee’s birthday extends state holiday weekend?

[mfcorey1]

By Kristina Torres
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Friday after Thanksgiving is an official state holiday in Georgia, although not for what you might think:
Happy Birthday, Robert E. Lee!
If that made you do a double-take, you are not alone.
Lee’s birthday — while actually on Jan. 19 —- will be observed in the Peach State on Nov. 23, bookending the April observance of Confederate Memorial Day as Georgia’s salute to two “holidays” on the decline, even in the South.
While no one questions the state’s prominence in the Confederacy and the Civil War’s impact within its borders, there are those who wonder whether it is time for Georgia to leave that narrative to historians amid a growing generational divide.
Then there are those who didn’t know it was a holiday, period.

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/robert-e-lees-birthday-extends-state-holiday-weeke/nTDRw/

[hrmjustin]

1. Wow Lee gets a holiday.

[dlwickham]

2. maybe Germany will give Hitler one

and Japan will give Tito one and Italy will give Mussolini one as well

[busterbrown]

6. Maybe a choreographer can adapt a General Lee Holiday Ice Show. How much fun would that be?

[On the Road]

3. The State of Virginia

decided to combine Martin Luther King Day with the birthdays of Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson to make Lee-Jackson-King Day. So this is par for the course.

[ananda]

4. Boyhidey..

.. the South sure is clinging to its Confederate history these days.

I guess I know why, but it's painful to think about.

[SheilaT]

5. Oh, heck, the South has always clung to Confederate history.

I'm old enough to recall before Memorial Day was a set national holiday, and various Southern states had their own date for Memorial Day.

In Tucson, in 1966, I worked for a Texas-based company that had that state's Memorial Day as their own holiday. Don't ask me the exact date. That was a while back.