I’m not dissing Casmir, but these days holidays have less and less to do with the intent of the person being honored and more and more about having another day off work and school and sales, and sales and sales.
Nobody has the day off for this holiday, except maybe city workers. They just made it a holiday to please the large Polish immigrant population in the city.
For the same reason, a big street called Crawford Avenue was renamed “Pulaski Road”. That wasn’t enough though. In the 90s, they came out with “honorary” street names where they would put a little placard beneath the street sign with another name on it, usually to honor someone from the community who had died. Well, what do you know, now Pulaski Road also has an honorary street name of “Casimir Pulaski Boulevard”. I guess naming it after Pulaski once didn’t get enough Polish votes so they did it again!