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Independence Day is a holiday in the United States, although many nations have a holiday where they celebrate independence from another nation, to celebrate America’s independence from Great Britain and the creation of the United States. The holiday is often called The Fourth of July and is set on the day when the Declaration of Independence was published declaring independence from Great Britain in 1776. The Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775, when the New England states began fighting British forces over their objection to Parliament's taxation policies and lack of colonial representation. As the war expanded, the national congress of the 13 colonies voted in secret to declare independence from Great Britain, and on July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed. As one would expect when fighting the British at this time (the world’s most successful military power), the United States struggled to claim its independence via a military campaign. However, on October 19, 1781, the British would surrender during the Siege of Yorktown and the fighting would come to an end in the colonies. Thanks to America’s ally, the French, and a massive resolve to become independent, the United States would be formed as a nation. September 3, 1783, made the British surrender official as both sides signed the Treaty of Paris and the United States could officially call themselves a free nation. Today the holiday is celebrated through picnics, BBQs, festivals, and of course fireworks. View the full article

Father’s Day a national holiday in the United States that honors fatherhood and was first celebrated on June 19th, 1910. While that may have been a straightforward intro to a holiday for our blog, the fact is that Father’s Day also had a quite simple and uneventful start when compared to most holidays out there. In Europe, Saint Joseph’s Day was started in the Catholic faith as a feast day to celebrate fatherhood. This feast day was usually celebrated on March 19th and started in the very early 1500s (some believe it may have been the late 1400s) and was eventually brought to the Americas by Spanish and Portuguese settlers. This holiday never truly began a world holiday and while it is celebrated commonly in Europe, in America it was not a well-recognized event. In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd, who was raised by only her father along with multiple bothers, attended a Mother’s Day event at her church and pushed to make a holiday for fathers as Saint Joseph’s Day was mostly unknown in America. She ended up suggesting this idea to the Spokane Ministerial Alliance and requested a worldwide Father’s Day to be celebrated on her father’s birthday of June 5th. The Spokane Ministerial Alliance ended up supporting the idea but made the holiday fall on the third Sunday of June instead. June 19, 1910 was the first Father’s Day celebration and was hosted in Spokane, Washington thanks to Sonora’s efforts. However, the holiday struggled to gain ground and ended up fading in the 1920s, even after President Woodrow Wilson praised the Spokane services in 1916 via a telegram. Oddly enough, Father’s Day not only almost never became a holiday but also nearly ended Mother’s Day as a separate holiday as well during its early years. In the 20s and 30s, men were not very receptive of the day or willing to receive gifts for being a father and this created a movement to merge Mother’s Day and Father’s Day into Parent’s Day. The Great Depression and its rampant effects on the commercialization of these holidays would end up defeating the effort to merge them together. World War II would bring attention back to the need of a national holiday for fathers and the 1960s would bring Father’s Day back into the national spotlight as in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day. In 1972, President Richard Nixon would establish the holiday as a permanent national observance as we know it today. View the full article

Juneteenth, which is short or June Nineteenth, celebrates the day when United States federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to occupy the state and ensure that slaves were being freed following the Civil War. The event took place on June 19th in 1865, two months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House to end the Civil War. It is often considered the longest-running African American holiday and honors the end of slavery in the United States. Even after the Civil War had ended slavery was mostly unaffected in Texas against the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 that freed all the slaves in in the Confederacy. This was the case until General Gordon Granger entered Texas and read General Orders No.3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”. Some consider this action to be the true beginning of the end of slavery in the United States as the Emancipation Proclamation did not uniformly end slavery in the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation was a military focused action that only freed the slaves currently living in the rebelling Confederate states and had no affect on the Union states that still used slaves. This action was to gain the support of local slaves to fight against the Confederacy but would go on to swing Lincoln’s stance on slavery and be a driving force to the end slavery. While Texas did succeed and join the Confederacy, it was mostly unaffected by the war as no large-scale fighting or Union troop occupation was seen throughout the war. Many slavers found the state to be a haven for slavery and started to travel to the state from other areas. Even after General Granger’s arrival and orders, numerous slavers would continue to use slaves and hide their freedom until after the current harvest season. In December of 1865, the 13th Amendment would pass, and slavery would officially end in the United States. In 1866, freed slavers in Texas would organize “Jubilee Day” on June 19th and it would become an annual celebration of freedom in the state. The event would be full of music, prayer, barbecues, and other community events to celebrate. In 1979, Texas would become the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday and several other states would follow over the years. In 2021, the US Senate passed a resolution establishing Juneteenth National Independence Day as a national holiday, but as of writing this article it has yet to pass as a full law. To this day, many will still refer to the holiday as Jubilee Day, June Nineteenth, Emancipation Day, or even Freedom Day. View the full article

Memorial Day is an American holiday honoring the men and women who lost their lives serving the United States military. It is observed on the last Monday of May and originated in the years following the US Civil War, before becoming an official federal holiday in 1971. Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting memorials and cemeteries of those who lost their lives in military service along with holding family gatherings and festivals that are often based around parades. Memorial Day got its beginning after the Civil War ended in 1865 and had claimed so many lives, more live than any conflict in U.S. history, that it required the establishment of the nation's first national cemeteries. The Civil War ended in the spring which began a tradition in many American towns and cities where people would hold tributes at the cemeteries for the countless soldiers that lost their life in the line of duty. These tributes were performed by decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers to honor the graves of those who had fallen. There is no record of the true origin of these tributes, and many agree that they were independently created by local communities. The earliest account of a Memorial Day style commemoration to the fallen soldiers of the war is a group of freed slaves in Charleston, SC less than a month after the war ended. However, in 1966 the federal government declared Waterloo, NY as the official birthplace of Memorial Day. The Waterloo celebration was first held on May 5th, 1966 and was chosen as the birthplace as it hosted an annual, community-wide event, that was also recognized by the closing of all local businesses during the celebration. In 1968, General John A. Logan was the leader of an organization that aided northern civil war veterans and called for the creation of a national holiday to remember the fallen. Decoration Day was the original name chosen for the holiday to be celebrated for the first time on the 30th of May in 1968. On the first Decoration Day, future president General James Garfield made a speech at the Arlington National Cemetery and approximately 5000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 civil war soldiers buried there. Many northern states held similar commemorative events and by 1890 every northern state had made Decoration Day an official state holiday. Southern states would also adopt commemorative holidays for the fallen veterans of the civil war but would celebrate on different days than the north. Confederate Memorial Day was the holiday created in the South, and is still celebrated in several states today, also commemorating the fallen veterans of the civil war but with a heavy focus on the confederacy. Today this holiday has become highly controversial, and it is only celebrated in a select few states. During World War 1, the United States found itself in a new war that resulted in a heavy casualty toll on the men and women serving the U.S. military. This war was the beginning of a trend to change Decoration Day into a holiday that commemorates all American military personnel who died in all wars. The holiday slowly became known as Memorial Day and continued to be observed on May 30th with even the southern states now adopting the holiday. In 1968 the U.S. government passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, as an attempt to standardized Holidays and create a three-day weekend for federal employees to celebrate those events. In this act, Memorial Day was officially recognized as a national holiday and began being celebrated on the last Monday of May. This change went into effect in 1971 and created the Memorial Day holiday that we know of today. View the full article

Mother's Day is a holiday that honors motherhood and is celebrated in numerous different formats and on different days around the world. In the United States, Mother's Day is a single day event where children will often present their mother with flowers and other gifts of appreciation. The holiday has also been known to be associated with numerous women's rights activist movement in recent history. The earliest accounts of a holiday or celebration of motherhood can be traced to the ancient Greeks and Romans who often held festivals in honor of the mother goddesses Cybele and Rhea. However, when it comes to the actual traditions of modern-day Mother's Day, it is often associated with the early Christian festival known as Mothering Sunday. Mothering Sunday was once a major tradition in Europe, primarily the United Kingdom, and fell on the 4th Sunday during Lent. The tradition was based around faithful Christians returning to their “mother church” (the main church around their home) for a special service provided at the church. This tradition slowly transitioned into a holiday where children would present their actual mothers with flowers and other gifts. Mothering Sunday slowly fell out of popularity and eventually merged with the American Mother's Day in the 1930s. In the United states Mother's Day got its start from clubs called Mother's Day Work Clubs that taught local women childcare and other motherly skills. These clubs became a unifying force during the civil war and in 1868 Ann Reeves Jarvis organized Mother’s Friendship Day which mothers of both union and Confederate soldiers gathered to promote reconciliation. In the late 1800s numerous movements and celebrations began appearing to celebrate motherhood and even world peace, like Mother's Peace Day. In the early 1990s Anna Jarvis, the daughter of Ann Reeves Jarvis, conceived Mother’s Day after the death of her mother as a way for children to honor the sacrifices their mothers make. The first Mother's Day celebration was in May of 1908 funded by a Philadelphia department store owner John Wanamaker and took place as a celebration at the Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. During that day thousands of people also attended a special Mother's Day event at one of Wanamaker’s retail stores in Philadelphia. Following the success of the first Mother's Day celebration Jarvis committed her life to getting the holiday added to the national calendar. Her argument was that American holidays were biased towards male achievements and as early as 1912 many states and local areas had adapted Mother’s Day as an annual holiday. In 1914 president Woodrow Wilson officially signed Mother's Day as a national holiday on the 2nd Sunday in May. After it became a national holiday, Jarvis began to protest the commercialization of the holiday in the 1920s when commercialization of flowers and other gifts seemed to outweigh the original celebration of motherhood. By the time of her death in 1948 Jarvis had disowned the holiday altogether after years of actively lobbying the government to remove it from the national calendar. View the full article

Cinco de Mayo, or translated as the Fifth of May, is the Mexican holiday that celebrates the Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla during Franco-Mexican war. The day is sometimes referred to as Battle of Puebla Day and always falls on the 5th day of May. Cinco de Mayo is often referred to in the United States as Mexican Independence Day, but this is an incorrect reference as it is a minor holiday in Mexico and is the celebration of a single battle. Mexican Independence Day, or Día de la Independencia, is celebrated on September 16th as the commemoration of Mexico’s declaration of war against the Spanish government in 1810. The Franco-Mexican war was a joint military response by France, Britain, and Spain who sent military forces to Veracruz, Mexico demanding repayment of loans and other finances due to Mexico’s ongoing financial troubles and defaulting on recent payments. Britain and Spain never engaged in military combat due to negotiations with the Mexican government, however, France decided to use the opportunity to expand their empire into the Mexican owned territory. The Battle of Puebla was a final stand made by a ragtag Mexican military force that was vastly outnumbered and underequipped to face the French army but managed to hold the line against the French invasion. After this battle The United States, who was finally recovering from the Civil War, began to apply political pressure to the French and support for the Mexican military causing the French forces to withdraw. While in Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is primarily observed in the state of Puebla, where the victory had occurred, the United States began celebrating the holiday around the 1960s as a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage within the United States. Since the 1960s Cinco de Mayo has rapidly grown in popularity within the United States with numerous festivals and events celebrating Mexican traditions and culture within the nation. While the holiday is still officially the commemoration of a victory in a military battle, it is widely regarded has a cultural celebration in modern times here in the United States. Many people connect this holiday with the association of Mexican traditions due to the high number of indigenous Mexicans that fought in the Battle of Puebla. View the full article

Easter, the Christian holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is one of the oldest Christian holidays and is often considered a convergence of Christian, Hebrew, and Pagan cultures. The New Testament of the Bible states that Jesus was crucified by the Romans in roughly 30 A.D. and was resurrected on a Sunday that has become Easter Sunday. Easter day is also the conclusion of a series of events called the “Passion of the Christ”, that is a 40-day long period of fasting, prayer, and sacrifice that begins with Lent. Officially Easter is one of the most religious and celebrated holidays within the Christian culture however it is also mixed with many traditions that pre-date Christian beliefs from earlier Pagan times and the Jewish holiday of Passover. The origin of the word Easter is still a debated topic and was not the original name for the holiday. The most widely accepted origin of Easter was from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility, Eastre (or Eeostre). However, one of easter's earlier names was “hebdomada alba” which meant “white week” and it is believed that due to translation issues particularly with people speaking Old High German mistakenly translated the word as “Osteun” (which is a plural for the word “dawn”) which became Easter in English. For those curious, the reasoning Easter is centered around a bunny, or hare, is due to the holiday's heavy Pagan based history. When Easter was first celebrated by Christians its celebrations were based off Pagan festivals and Easter was a festival within itself. In Pagan tradition bunnies are a symbol of many beliefs, but most prominently fertility, and it is logical to utilize them as a symbol for celebrating new life. Bunnies are also an ancient symbol of the moon and the date of Easter is based around the moon. This association with the moon and an association with the bunny’s burrow being connected as a symbol of Jesus emerging from his tomb has kept the bunny well within Easter's traditions. Easter eggs on the other hand have a less solid of a connection to Easter, although there are many associations to the eggs that could connect them to the ancient holiday. Many ancient cultures believed the world began as an enormous egg, and with many of these cultures having contact with early Christians it is highly plausible the eggs became a symbol of new life just like the bunny. There are also sources that state many ancient cultures, again many that were directly associated with ancient Christians, utilized eggs as gifts during festival's along with some sources stating eating dyed eggs was a common practice during spring festivals and likely just transitioned into an Easter tradition. While bunnies and eggs are possibly the most common association with Easter, the most Christian association with Easter would be the Easter lamb. The lamb is connected to the Jewish holiday of Passover where families killed a lamb as a sacrifice. According to beliefs, when Jesus Christ became the “Passover Lamb” for everybody the lamb itself became a symbol of his sacrifice. View the full article