QUARANTINE BLOG # 226

November 11, 2020

The Quarantine Blog published an early reminder about Veterans Day last Wednesday.  Today, a look back at the history of this important celebration, and to remember the members of our military, past and present.

Veterans Day is a federal holiday observed annually on November 11, to celebrate those who have served in the United States Armed Forces, and were discharged under honorable conditions. It coincides with other holidays, including Armistice Day and Remembrance Day which are celebrated in other countries that mark the anniversary of the end of World War I.

Armistice Day is commemorated every year on November 11 to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning – the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918. 

Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations –  54 member states, nearly all former territories of the British Empire – celebrate Remembrance Day, sometimes known informally as Poppy Day owing to the tradition of the remembrance poppy.

The tradition of the poppy stems from the poem “In Flanders Fields,” written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

  That mark our place; and in the sky

  The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

  Loved and were loved, and now we lie

      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

  The torch; be yours to hold it high.

  If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

      In Flanders fields.

On November 11, 1919, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson issued a message to his countrymen on the first Armistice Day, in which he expressed what he felt the day meant to Americans:

Address to Fellow-Countrymen

The White House, November 11, 1919.

A year ago today our enemies laid down their arms in accordance with an armistice which rendered them impotent to renew hostilities, and gave to the world an assured opportunity to reconstruct its shattered order and to work out in peace a new and juster set of international relations ...

Out of this victory there arose new possibilities of political freedom and economic concert ... To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service, and with gratitude for the victory ...

Woodrow Wilson

In 1945, World War II veteran Raymond Weeks from Birmingham, Alabama, had the idea to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, not just those who died in World War I. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill into law on May 26, 1954. Congress amended the bill on June 1, 1954, replacing “Armistice” with “Veterans,”  and it has been known as Veterans Day ever since.

Veterans Day is distinct from Memorial Day. Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans, while Memorial Day honors those who had died while in military service.

While the holiday is commonly printed as Veteran’s Day or Veterans’ Day in calendars and advertisements, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs website states that no apostrophe will be used “because it is not a day that ‘belongs’  to veterans, it is a day for honoring all veterans.”

👉  There is a sense that all Christians are veterans, for we are involved in a spiritual battle that we often take for granted.   Many hymns have been written about this battle.  One of those was written by Sabine Baring-Gould.  But while this hymn speaks about this spiritual battle, it was really written for a different purpose.  

According to the author, “Whit-Monday is a great day for school festivals in Yorkshire, England (Whitsunday, or White Sunday, better known as Pentecost Sunday, was historically a day when Christians would be baptized, and they would wear white robes).  One Whit-Monday, thirty years ago (1865), it was arranged that our school should join forces with that of a neighboring village.  I wanted the children to sing when marching from one village to another, but couldn’t think of anything quite suitable; so I sat up at night, resolved that I would write something myself.  ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ was the result.”

While you mediate upon this “marching” song, and honor those who have fought for our freedom, be reminded of the spiritual battle which we face each day and our need to “march on” in the power and under the leadership of Jesus who died that we might live.

Here is “Onward, Christian Soldiers” by Fountainview Academy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhiHoqp0neU.

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