There is a somewhat obscure holiday “Confederate Memorial Day” in late April. Absolutely no one gets it off except for some government workers in Southern states. It’s good timing for a holiday as it breaks up that long stretch between MLK/Presidents Day and Memorial day. If we were to add a new federal holiday, March/April is good timing for a holiday. There would be some poetic justice in appropriating a date to honor confederate “heroes” with one for those they oppressed.
That being said, I don’t intend this as whitesplaining and wypipo shouldn’t be the deciding vote on the date to celebrate emancipation.
MLK day was a state holiday in Virginia celebrating Lee and Jackson. I saw a school marquee in the mid ‘00s saying “happy Lee-Jackson-King day”. Seemed kinda strange.
I first heard about it around 17 years ago from a coworker from Texas.
My first thought was, “Damn, you Texans were extra racist trying to hold on to your slaves even after the war was over.”
my company gets MLK, presidents, and juneteenth (this is year 1 of juneteenth). the rest are the main ones (NYD, MEM, 4th, Labor, Thanks&Fri, Christmas), it’s never enough, but we do skip vets and october.
We just got MLK a couple of years ago, and the HR announcement was vague. It was actually an additional paid day off, but it looked like they were reallocating one of our existing personal holidays.
I dunno if we’ll get Juneteenth.
It will be nice to have it as a federal holiday anyway.
Per the Gospels, His crucifixion happened during Passover, which in ancient times was set by actual observations of the moon & the vernal equinox. (Now both Passover & Easter are set by different formulas, so they don’t always coincide.)
I appreciate that John Cornyn has sponsored this bill for nearly a decade, but he may want to look a little closer to home to make some changes. In Texas, we don’t celebrate “Confederate Memorial Day,” we celebrate Confederate Heroes Day on January 19th. For those paying attention, January 19th is always very close, and sometimes falls on the 3rd Monday of the month (also known as MLK Day). There are bills filed every session to abolish the holiday and they go nowhere.
Apparently January 19th is Lee’s bday, which was the original holiday. It was renamed “in honor of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other Confederate heroes.”
Just seems a bit ironic. To have a distinct memorial day/heroes day you have to accept that these were people fighting against the US which makes them… traitors. Seems far easier to just cover them under US Memorial Day.
Did any of them die during the Civil War (the named ones)?
Seems wrong to cover them in memorial day.
I would support a federal holiday called “Traitor Day” were the point is to acknowledge notable traitors in US History, and learn from the damage that they caused.
Lee
Davis
Trump
Hawley
Arnold
I thought the formulas were pretty close except the day of the week restriction on Easter and whether you’re going by a Jerusalem or Rome clock, since Jerusalem and Rome are in different time zones.
