Holidays Archives – THE PAGE TURNS

May 22, 2026May 23, 2026

Decoration Days

The tradition of roses and the military go back 2000 years to the Romans. Annually, the Memorial Day Flowers Foundation hands out over 120,000 roses and carnations in Arlington National Cemetery (U.S. Army photo by Rachel Larue)

This coming weekend is Memorial Day weekend, officially an observance to honor fallen soldiers but unofficially the beginning of the summer. We have Congress in 1968 to thank for creating the Uniform Holiday Act, which turned many of our solemn, meaningful observances into convenient three-day weekends, perfect for getaways full of clogged traffic leaving town and home improvement projects that I don’t have enough time to finish because I didn’t start until Monday. On the other hand, the garage could use a spruce up…

I’ve never been able to warm up to Memorial Day, and trying to put my finger on it, I think it’s because of the hypocrisy. To the extent that there’s a typical saying besides “Hot Dogs Half OFF!” or “Beach is Open” or “Maybe there’s a frontage road around this mess…,” the speeches come from politicians determined to shape the idea of sacrifice into a battering ram to justify more use of force. It doesn’t help that every single American war in my lifetime has been about the elite in the US sending the have-not soldiers into places we should not be, but of course that’s not the fault of those in uniform, thank you for your service. (Don’t get me wrong; I would rather have a military than the alternative.) It just too often makes me think of those Jackson Browne lyrics:

I want to know who the men in the shadows are,
I want to hear someone asking them why,
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they’re never the ones to fight and to die…
Jackson Browne “Lives in the Balance”

Still, perhaps in penance for not sufficiently appreciating the sacrifice because of politicians’ crocodile tears, I can offer up a little historical journey. Not why America created Memorial Day because all those bot-churned quasi-stories will trace it to the Civil War. Instead, my question is was putting flowers on military graves always a thing? How did other, older cultures used to celebrate their dead? We’re one of the few cultures that only observes this for one day and restricts it to people in the military.

Meanwhile lots of other cultures, historically, set aside time to remember those who passed before us, especially family members.

March 16, 2026March 16, 2026

Everyone is Green (Not Necessarily Irish)

Celtic knots in the Book of Kells. Photo at Wikipedia.

Author’s Note: An oldie but a goodie–perfect for the month of March.

Ninety percent of Americans are not Irish. Thus, it has always confused me that everyone wants to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. If your heritage is Irish, more power to you, please feel free to immerse yourself in your culture. If you are in Ireland, I have no doubt it was a gay old time. But why in the sam heck is March 17 entrenched as an annual holiday? Every U.S. calendar in the month of March has a giant shamrock symbol on it. Yet, the vast majority of us aren’t Irish, and we don’t all get our own cultural holidays, do we?

Is Everyone Really Irish in America on St. Patrick’s Day?

It particularly never ceases to amaze me when my diverse Bay Area colleagues, whose English is heavily tinged with accents from the Philippines, Ecuador, Hong Kong, and Mumbai, remind me that we will all need to wear green. What color do I get to wear on Polish heritage day? When is Diwali again? What’s that traditional German dish that we all eat on …. really, there’s no German-American day? That’s particularly surprising when Germans comprise nearly 17% of our ancestry.

Map of U.S. ancestry by county. Photo from Vivid Maps.

January 20, 2026January 20, 2026

Vision

1963 March on Washington speaker podium. Photo by Warren Leffler.

There was anxiety in Washington the day before the 1963 March on Washington. They were so worried, they closed the liquor stores. The opening line of the New York Times article spoke rather fearfully of the “vanguard” of tens of thousands of people, who had begun arriving on the roads and filling the bus and train stations. The largest marches up until that time had been only around 30-40,000 people, and it was pretty clear this would be bigger. Organizers hoped for 100,000. Martin Luther King was last on a long list of speakers.

The concern was unfounded. There was no violence, no major counter-protest (a small group of Nazis was quickly dispatched), little untoward behavior by police or protesters. People showed up en masse but marched as planned, gathered as planned, and patiently listened to speakers as planned. Their patience was rewarded: it was the largest protest march on Washington in history at the time, estimated at 250-300,000. And they heard one of the greatest orations ever delivered.

The Gathering

There had been marches to Washington before, protesting wages, unemployment, and civil rights. Five thousand walked in D.C. at the 1922 “Silent March” on Washington to urge passage of the Dyer anti-lynching bill. But few years later in 1925, the KKK brought 30,000 racists into Washington, one of the largest marches of its time. People came to Washington to protest multiple times during the Great Depression, looking for help and answers.

During the FDR administration, the idea of a march by Blacks to protest discrimination in jobs and the military was advanced repeatedly among leaders of civil rights organization. At the time, marches often helped to pressure Congress, but leaders weren’t sure that the “Court and Congress” strategy was all that effective for Blacks. Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court decreeing “separate but equal” facilities were acceptable was only a few decades old in 1933.

The organizers of the 1963 march began planning in December 1961, after Kennedy was elected but in no hurry to champion civil rights. The courts had outlawed some types of segregation in the 1950s, but armed guards still had to accompany children to school. Mass marches and nonviolent demonstrations across many places had been effective, but organizers sensed it was a time to push for more. Kennedy and many in his party supported civil rights in concept, but he urged the organizers not to march. Civil rights was on the list, but low priority. He was working on a bill, people should be patient. Civil rights always are a “distraction” to those who don’t need it.