The United States,
like other nations, sets aside a number of days each year
to commemorate events, people or public occasions. These
holidays typically are marked by a general suspension of
work and business activity, and by public and/or religious
ceremonies.
Technically, the United States does not
celebrate national holidays, but Congress has designated
10 "legal public holidays," during which most
federal institutions are closed and most federal employees
excused from work. Although the individual states and private
businesses are not required to observe these, in practice
all states, and nearly all employers, observe the majority
of them.
Since 1971, a number of these have been
fixed on Mondays rather than on a particular calendar date
so as to afford workers a long holiday weekend:
• New Year's Day
(January 1)
Americans celebrate the beginning of a new
year at home, with friends, and in gatherings from the Tournament
of Roses Parade in California to the giant gathering in
New York’s Times Square.
• Birthday of Martin Luther
King, Jr. (third Monday in January)
On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan
signed legislation establishing a legal holiday honoring
the civil rights leader (born January 15). By 1999, all
50 states observed the holiday.
• Washington's Birthday
(third Monday in February)
The birthday of George Washington, military
leader of the American Revolution and first president of
the United States, has been a legal holiday since 1885.
It was originally celebrated each February 22. The Uniform
Holidays Act, passed by Congress in 1968 to take effect
in 1971, fixed the holiday on a Monday. As a number of states
also celebrated the February 12 birthday of Abraham Lincoln,
the 16th president, some legislators advocated combining
the two events into a single holiday. The final legislation
retained the Washington's Birthday holiday but many Americans
now call the holiday "Presidents' Day," believing
the change to Mondays was intended to honor both Washington
and Lincoln or all presidents.
• Memorial Day (last
Monday in May)
Beginning after the 1861–65 Civil
War, many states observed a May 30 holiday (known as "Decoration
Day") honoring the lives lost in that conflict, often
by decorating their graves with flowers. After the First
World War, these ceremonies typically were expanded to include
the nation’s war dead in every conflict. The Uniform
Holidays Act established a federal legal holiday, fixed
on a Monday, beginning in 1971. All 50 states observe the
holiday.
• Independence Day
(July 4)
The Independence Day holiday commemorates
the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second
Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The holiday was already
widely observed throughout the nation when Congress declared
it a federal legal holiday, in 1870.
• Labor Day (first
Monday in September)
First observed in New York City in September
1882, the Labor Day holiday commemorates the contributions
of working men and women. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland
signed legislation establishing the federal holiday. Labor
union participation in annual parades remains common, while
for many Americans the holiday demarks the unofficial end
of summer and beginning of the school year. An annual Labor
Day telethon raises tens of millions of dollars for the
benefit of Muscular Dystrophy research.
• Columbus Day (second
Monday in October)
Commemorates Christopher Columbus's first
landing in the Americas, October 12, 1492. Beginning in
the late 19th century, Italian-Americans began to celebrate
the holiday as a celebration of their heritage, as Columbus
is widely believed to be of Italian origin. In 1937, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the federal holiday, which
the Uniform Holidays Act subsequently fixed on a Monday.
• Veterans Day (November
11)
The Veterans Day holiday is derived from
Armistice Day, commemorating the end of the First World
War, November 11, 1918. Many states began quickly began
to observe this holiday, and Congress proclaimed a federal
holiday in 1938. In 1954, Congress changed the holiday’s
name to Veterans Day, in recognition of those who served
during the Second World War and the Korean conflict. Today
it recognizes all members of the armed forces, living and
dead, who served during times of peace or war. (Memorial
Day, by contrast, honors those who gave their lives.) While
Veterans Day was among the holidays moved to Mondays beginning
in 1971, Congress in 1978 restored the holiday to its original
November 11 date. Among the annual ceremonies is one at
the Tomb of the Unknowns at the Arlington National Cemetery.
• Thanksgiving Day
(fourth Thursday in November)
A variant of the harvest festivals celebrated
in many parts of the world, Thanksgiving is popularly traced
to a 1621 feast enjoyed by the English Pilgrims who founded
the Plymouth Colony (located in present day Massachusetts)
and members of the Wampanoag Native American tribe. Over
the years that followed, state and federal governments declared
numerous days of Thanksgiving to mark important public events.
In 1817, New York became the first state to declare an annual
Thanksgiving Day. In 1863, during the long and bloody civil
war, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday
in November "a day of Thanksgiving and Praise."
Congress made Thanksgiving a legal federal holiday in 1941
and moved the holiday from the last Thursday in November
to the fourth Thursday, in hopes of stimulating the economy
by lengthening (in some years) the Christmas shopping season.
The holiday is typically celebrated at home and remains
the occasion for a large and festive meal, and for expressing
thanks for that bounty.
• Christmas Day (December
25)
Most Protestants and Roman Catholics and
some Orthodox Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus on
December 25. Before the 19th century, many Americans worked
on Christmas, but in the industrial era the holiday began
also to honor universal values, such as home, children and
family life, and to incorporate secular customs like exchanging
gifts and cards, and the decoration and display of evergreen
"Christmas Trees." Congress proclaimed Christmas
a federal holiday in 1870. In 1999, a federal court acknowledged
these secular aspects in rejecting a claim that the holiday
impermissibly endorsed and furthered a particular religious
belief.
States and private employers are free to
adopt their own holidays. Six of the federal legal holidays—New
Year's Day; Washington's Birthday/Presidents' Day; Memorial
Day; Independence Day; Labor Day; Thanksgiving and Christmas—are
observed nearly universally throughout the public and private
sectors. States sometimes observe holidays not recognized
by the federal government. New Jersey, for instance, observes
Lincoln's Birthday, Good Friday and Election Day; Virginia
celebrates Lee-Jackson Day, honoring Confederate generals
Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan ("Stonewall")
Jackson, and the Day after Thanksgiving, affording state
employees a four-day holiday weekend.
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