What is Flag Day and why do we celebrate it? What to know about the June holiday's history
While June brings several holidays, like Juneteenth and Father's Day, there's a more obscure holiday this Father's Day weekend.
Flag Day lands on the Saturday before Father's Day this year, which is always the third Sunday in June. It isn't a federal holiday and most people in the U.S. don't get the day off of work, but most will this year, since it lands on a weekend day.
Here's when Flag Day 2025 is, what it is, why it's observed and how it started.
Flag Day, which is observed on the same day in June every year, falls on the day before Father's Day this year.
Flag Day 2025 will fall this Saturday, June 14, and Father's Day is the next day, on Sunday, June 15.
When is Father's Day 2025? Here's the date and origin story for the June holiday for dads
Flag Day commemorates the day that the Continental Congress decided what the official American flag would look like: June 14, 1777.
'According to legend, in 1776, George Washington commissioned Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross to create a flag for the new nation,' The Library of Congress says.
'Scholars, however, credit the flag's design to Francis Hopkinson, who also designed the Great Seal and first coin of the United States. Even so, Ross most likely met Washington and certainly sewed early American flags in her family's Philadelphia upholstery shop.'
According to the Library of Congress, there have been 27 different official versions of the American flag, with the arrangement of stars varying until President Taft standardized the flag to 48 stars in six rows of eight.
The current version of the flag with all 50 stars was standardized on July 4, 1960, after Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21, 1959.
Yes. Flag Day is not a federal holiday and doesn't mean a break from work or normal government-funded operations like mail service when it falls on a weekday.
But this year, those who don't work weekends will have the day off because it falls on a Saturday in 2025.
Flag Day commemorates June 14, 1776, which is the day the Continental Congress agreed on what the nation's flag would look like.
In 1916, President Wilson issued a proclamation of June 14 as Flag Day. And more than 30 years later, in 1949, President Truman signed a formal observance of the holiday into law.
But the creation of Flag Day pre-dates Wilson's proclamation and started in the 1880s, with a school teacher in Waubeka, Wisconsin, a small town about 35 miles outside of Milwaukee.
'On June 14, 1885, Bernard J. Cigrand, an 18-year-old Waubeka native teaching at Stony Hill School, put a flag in his inkwell and assigned his students an essay about what the flag means to them,' PBS says.
'Cigrand left the next year for dental school in Chicago, but he never gave up his advocacy for a national day dedicated to the flag. Cigrand realized his dream in 1916 when Wilson issued his proclamation.'
Yes! Flag Day shares a date with the birth of the U.S. Army, which pre-dates the decision of what the American flag would look like by two years.
"According to U.S. Army history reports, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress authorized the formation of 10 companies from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia to march to Boston to support the war against England for independence and put it under the command of General George Washington a few days later on June 19, 1775," according to Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA), the Department of Defense's largest military installation.
"This army was known as the Army of the United Colonies until its name was changed to the Army of the United States after the Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776."
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Flag Day this Father's Day weekend: What to know about the obscure holiday
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