July 4, Juneteenth and the Meaning of US National Holidays

NEW YORK - On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress formally endorsed the Declaration of Independence. Celebrations began within days: parades and public readings, bonfires and candles and the firing of 13 musket rounds, one for each of the original states. 

Nearly a century passed before the country officially named its founding a holiday.  With the recent passage of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, the country now has 12 federal holidays. Many are fixtures in the American calendar, but their presence isn't only a story of continuity. They reflect how the U.S. has evolved — from an affiliation of states with a relatively small federal government to a more centralized nation.   Statewide and local gatherings for Independence Day and other holidays are as old as the country itself. But the first round of federal holidays, identified as such because federal employees (initially only federal employees in Washington, D.C.) were given the day off, was only signed into law in 1870, by President Ulysses S. Grant, five years after the Civil War ended.