Veterans Day
This is my first Veterans Day as an atheist.
First I’m going to explain what Veterans Day means to me now, then I’m going to look it up online.
Before Research: Veterans Day is the one day a year that we celebrate war veterans. Which war? I have no idea, I assume all wars.
After Research: Veterans Day is both a federal holiday and a state holiday in all states, it is celebrated on the same day as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day in other parts of the world, falling on November 11, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. So I was mostly right, but I had no idea why it was on this day. Another holiday without religious meaning, woohoo.
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Holidays, My First, My Own Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:24 am
As a contribution to your research:
I’m afraid this day does have religious significance after all. The signing of the armistice treaty in 1918 was originally arranged on the 11th of November to coincide with Martinmas, the feast day of St. Martin the patron saint of soldiers.
However, if you were to research other religious festivals and feast days futher (which is much easier when you’re an atheist) you’d soon see the pattern of re-appropriated solar/seasonal celebrations – easy examples include spring renewal (easter) and the winter solstice (almost the same day as Christmas). Although I can’t immediately come up with a seasonal/solar marker to attribute to 11/11 I see no reason why Martinmas would not follow the same pattern.
Going back to the Armistice day rituals themselves; the poppy is one of the very few symbols that I will wear this is because it realtes to the battlefields that bloomed with poppies soon after the war ended and is therefore a non-religious symbol. To take this even futher, some people have taken to wearing white poppies to represent the conciencious objectors who were executed for not wanting to take part in the fighting.