Since June 14th marks Flag Day every year, it seemed like a good idea to take a look at the holiday as it was celebrated in New Jersey’s newspapers.
Flag Day is celebrated in honor of the June 14, 1777 adoption of the design for the first official national American flag. Today it is celebrated as a national holiday, but early on, it was celebrated by individual states. There are competing claims regarding who originated the holiday, but by the 1880s, many schools were celebrating the holiday, often with the intention that the celebration would help with the assimilation of immigrant children. Regardless, as an article in the June 20, 1895 issue of The Advance notes, by that time, “In many of the States the anniversary is now a legal holiday, and will probably soon be so declared in all of them.” Even as the holiday got more embraced by the wider community, the school was still seen as one of the primary places of celebration; the issue of The Advance mentioned above dedicated almost a full page to the celebration of the holiday in schools. Still, the holiday did spread outside of the schools. As mentioned in the June 12, 1903 issue of the Perth Amboy Evening News, “Flag Day … has been observed in the schools and by patriotic societies by appropriate exercises and the citizens and business houses display the colors.”
Particularly enthusiastic supporters of the holiday were the Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veteran’s group. This is unsurprising, given the themes of the holiday encouraging loyalty to both the flag and the country. As one member articulated in the June 12, 1913 issue of The Lambertville Record, “Let us then encourage the displaying of the flag on this day above all others, and strive in all proper ways to accentuate patriotic loyalty to Nation and Flag, to the end that we shall have one non-sectional country of glory and liberty.”
Flag Day became especially appreciated during World War I. Patriotic Americans who had sons, brothers, and fathers fighting overseas in Europe felt particularly compelled to celebrate the holiday with much fanfare, as can be seen with headline below from The Pleasantville Press issue from June 9, 1917.
While Flag Day might not be celebrated with quite as much gusto these days, it is still a notable holiday; like the students of decades before, those of today still enjoy Flag Day activities. Beyond that, the interesting history of the holiday warrants at least some thought given to it today.
(Contributed by Tristan Smith)
Sources:
“Flag Day.” Britannica, April 14, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Flag-Day.
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “The Origins of Flag Day.” Celebrating America’s Freedoms. Accessed May 3, 2023. https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/celebrate/flagday.pdf.