Today is Flag Day. I know because I looked it up. Which is, it turns out, exactly the problem.

When I pulled up the newspapers from June 14th, 1926, I expected to find something surprising. What I found instead was something oddly familiar — newspapers across the country running the same gentle reminder that today was Flag Day and Americans should probably do something about it.

A hundred years later, here we are.

THE BACKSTORY

The flag itself was never the issue. By June 14th, 1926, it was 149 years old. Adopted by the Continental Congress on this exact date in 1777, thirteen stars on a blue field, thirteen alternating red and white stripes, representing what the Congress called "a new constellation." The Sacramento Union noted that since that day in 1777, the United States had fought every war under a flag differing in the arrangement of either the stars or stripes — but never the basic design. It was, the paper said, the only national flag in continuous service that had never fundamentally changed after its adoption.

By 1926 it carried forty-eight stars, one added for each state admitted to the union. The design had been standardized by President Taft in 1912, arranging the stars into six rows of eight. Everything else was the same flag it had always been.

The problem wasn't the flag. It was the holiday.

Flag Day as a national observance was only ten years old in 1926. President Woodrow Wilson issued the proclamation on June 14, 1916, calling for a nationwide Flag Day observance. Prior to that, the Sacramento Union reported, the custom was "a very variable one and left much to be desired in the matter of unity." Some localities had been celebrating it for years. A few states had their own observances. But there was no national coordination, no consistent tradition, no shared moment.

Wilson's proclamation helped. But even in 1926, Flag Day still wasn't law. Congress hadn't officially designated June 14th as Flag Day yet. That didn't happen until 1949, when President Truman signed the legislation — thirty-three years after Wilson's proclamation, a hundred and seventy-two years after the flag itself was adopted.

In 1926, schools held appropriate exercises. Patriotic organizations commemorated the adoption of the flag. Thousands of pupils across the country were instilled, per the papers, with thoughts of patriotism and reverence. The Daily Review Atlas ran a simple illustration of Old Glory with a caption noting it was declared the oldest national flag in continuous service in the world.

And then everyone looked ahead three weeks to the Fourth of July.

Flag Day has always had one structural problem that no proclamation, no legislation, and no newspaper reminder has ever solved. It arrives on June 14th, which is three weeks before the Fourth of July, which does everything Flag Day wants to do — celebrate the country, honoring the flag, expressing patriotism — but with fireworks, parades, cookouts, and a day off work.

The Fourth of July doesn't just compete with Flag Day. It renders it unnecessary.

The Sacramento Union in 1926 traced the whole history of efforts to establish Flag Day as a genuine national tradition — the early celebrations, the advocacy of Dr. B.J. Cigrand who wrote about it in 1883, the push by educator George Balch in 1889, the scattered services through the 1890s, Wilson's proclamation in 1916. Decades of effort by people who genuinely cared about having a dedicated moment to honor the flag.

And still, a hundred years later, most people find out it's Flag Day sometime around noon, usually from a post on the internet.

The flag is 249 years old today.

See you tomorrow

-Chris

Sources Sacramento Union, June 14, 1926. Seattle Union Record, June 14, 1926. Daily Review Atlas, June 14, 1926. Library of Congress Today in History, loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-14.