Leon and Amy Kass: What’s the Point of Flag Day?

Leon and Amy Kass, along with Diana Schaub, are editors of a new anthology, What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. Their website is www.whatsoproudlywehail.org.

Flag Day is unusual. Commemorating the birthday of the American flag, adopted in the midst of the American Revolution by the Second Continental Congress, Flag Day is not an official federal holiday. Instead, by an act of Congress passed in 1949, the president is merely “requested to issue each year a proclamation, calling on United States Government officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on Flag Day; and urging the people of the United States to observe Flag Day as the anniversary of the adoption on June 14, 1777.” President Obama has again honored that request, as have all his predecessors since President Truman.

Like its birthday, the American flag is unusual, both in looks and significance. Its composition symbolically reflects both the enduring idea and ideal of E Pluribus Unum, as well as our evolving national history. As everyone knows, the 13 stripes, alternating red and white, stand for the 13 original colonies and states; each of the 50 stars, white on a field of blue, stands for one of the current 50 states; the constellation of 50 stars standing for the United States as a whole — one out of many. As each new state was added to the Union, the number of stars increased in parallel, but the 13 stripes and the overall structure and colors have (almost always) remained the same. There have been 27 different “official” versions of the American flag, from the so-called Betsy Ross flag of 1777, to the (unique) 15-star, 15-stripe flag about which Francis Scott Key wrote his famous poem, to the current and longest-used flag, adopted on July 4, 1960, after Hawaii was admitted to the Union....