No we don’t. A single holiday is sufficient, and I am sure as hell not signing up for yet another December holiday. Spread things around if you want new holidays.
And arguably Juneteenth is even better than adequate since it arose from the Black community. Who better to decide the correct manner of celebrating the end of slavery?
Why bother. The Republicans would try to find a way to excluded about half the population from celebrating.
The holiday can’t have a 156th anniversary and mark the end of all slavery in the US, if slavery wasn’t ended at its first celebration.
Says who?
Look, slavery ended at various different dates in the US. We’re not going to have a holiday for each of them, and we’re also not going to insist that the final date is more valid than the first date or some date in the middle.
It was a process, and it’s perfectly valid to accept the date that the Black community identified and use that as the sole date of commemoration.
Logic. You can’t have a 156th-anniversary celebration of something that hasn’t happened 156 years ago.
Indeed. Because it is false history.
Holidays aren’t governed by logic, chief. They’re creatures of tradition.
But if you want logic, I’ll add that the events of June 19th most certainly did happen 156 years ago, and they were part of a larger pattern of events, and it’s perfectly valid to take June 19th to represent the entire event.
When they are based on a historical date, they should get the date right.
How? June 19th only represents the de facto freedom of slaves in Texas…no other state, and certainly not in the President’s home state.
Then we should really change American Independence Day to October 19th, 1781, shouldn’t we? Declaring independence is one thing, but it wasn’t fully realized until the defeat of Cornwallis.
But we’re not going to do that, because holidays are determined more on the history of tradition than the history of events.
I agree with HughGoply on this one. Juneteenth is being presented as the anniversary of the day slavery was ended in the United States. Which is not historically accurate.
But this is a holiday not a history exam. People can celebrate an event whenever they choose. The United States declared independence on July 2 not July 4 but we can put Independence Day where we like.
How is it not valid? Holidays are mostly arbitrary based on how people have historically decided to celebrate them. Juneteenth is the date that’s been designated and celebrated by the affected community. Now it’s law. End of story.
No it’s not. It’s being presented as a commemoration of the end of slavery. Nobody’s claiming that’s the exact date slavery ended.
It is being intentionally misrepresented to give people the impression that it was the date that slavery ended.
You do not have a cite for this.
A prior poster gave many cites and common knowledge supports it.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winnah!!!
Really, @HughGoply and @UltraVires, launching pedant talking points when it was already acknowledged that marking a day to celebrate an event is not the same as the actual day of an event, is really silly.
None of the cites say what either of you are claiming. You don’t have any evidence of common knowledge either.
The cites say exactly that. What else would you need?
So we’re going to change the date we celebrate Jesus’s birthday, right? And why are we constantly moving Easter around?