Veterans Day
Source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons, June 1, 1954 — President Eisenhower signing Veterans Day legislation
History
Veterans Day was originally celebrated as Armistice Day to commemorate the ending of hostilities in World War I, known at the time as “the war to end all wars,” on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.[1] The next year, President Woodrow Wilson issued the first Armistice Day proclamation, saying: “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, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations …”[2]
Wilson, who at the time was actively promoting the creation of the League of Nations, thought the holiday not only honored those who had perished but signaled America’s new role leading the “councils of the nations”[3] in building a lasting peace. In 1954, after America’s involvement in both World War II and Korea, Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation supported by veterans organizations changing the name of the holiday to “Veterans Day,” a holiday, which Eisenhower proclaimed, would allow “a grateful Nation [to] pay appropriate homage to the veterans of all its wars who have contributed so much to the preservation of this nation.” [4]
Guide for Celebration
Every meaningful gathering benefits from gentle guidance—someone to call the group together, set the tone, and help navigate the journey from ordinary time into a space of reflection and back again. This role of celebration Leader is not about authority or expertise, but about service: creating a container within which your family and friends can encounter these powerful texts and ideas together. Think of yourself less as a teacher and more as a facilitator, helping to orchestrate an experience that allows everyone present to engage with America’s founding documents and ongoing story.
The concept of liturgical leadership has deep roots across human cultures. From the ancient symposium to the Passover seder, from Quaker meetings to town halls, communities have long recognized that structured gatherings with designated facilitators help create “liminal space”—a threshold moment set apart from everyday life where transformation and deeper understanding become possible. By taking on this role, you’re not imposing artificial formality but rather tapping into a fundamental human practice: marking significant moments through deliberate, communal action.
If this feels awkward or pretentious at first, you’re not alone. Many Americans are unaccustomed to bringing ceremonial structure to secular holidays beyond saying grace at Thanksgiving. You might worry about seeming preachy or overly formal, especially with teenagers rolling their eyes or relatives who “just want to eat already.”
But consider this: we readily accept structure in other contexts—wedding toasts, birthday songs, even the seventh-inning stretch. What we’re proposing here is simply extending that same intentionality to holidays that celebrate our shared civic life. Start small if needed—perhaps just reading a single paragraph of the Declaration before your Fourth of July barbecue—and build from there. The simple act of pausing together, even briefly, to acknowledge why we’ve gathered can transform a meal into a memory and a holiday into a tradition.
The Leader will gather the people together, saying:
Dear Friends, [Please stand.] We are gathered here to celebrate Veterans Day by reading
[President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, a meditation on war and conflict delivered in the middle of the Civil War when it was not at all certain the Union would win]
[or Langston Hughes’s poem “Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?” which asks how America can continue its system of racial segregation after Black troops fought and sacrificed in World War II]
[or by singing a song whose lyrics are reproduced below to commemorate our country’s veterans.]
Please turn to [page xxx of your reader/on the printout on the table/by Googling xxx]. Let us go clockwise around [the table, the circle] staring with [xxx/the youngest/the guest], taking turns each person reading one sentence.
After the reading, the Leader may ask the group one or more of the following questions:
The Leader may conclude the celebration by saying:
Thank you for joining together to celebrate Veterans Day. Let’s continue to reflect on the words we’ve heard, take them into our hearts and minds, and use them to become better friends, better coworkers and students, and better citizens.
Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions for Veterans Day:
For everyone (young children included):
- Does our family know any veterans? What wars did they serve in? What did they do in the military?
- Go around the family circle and think of all the ways your lives are made better because of the service and sacrifices made by our servicemembers.
- How can we honor the service of veterans? How can our leaders honor their service? Do you think that our current level of societal appreciation for veterans’ work is too much, about the right amount, or too little?
- What kind of things can we do to help countries disagree peacefully?
For older children and adults:
- What does our country owe its veterans, especially its veterans of war?
- What values do you see exemplified in military service? How can we cultivate these values in civilian life?
- Veterans Day honors military service regardless of one’s views on particular conflicts. How can people with different perspectives on military action unite in honoring servicemembers?
- What role should the military as an institution play in American life? If you had a magic wand, is there anything you would you change it?
- Many countries such as Israel and the Republic of Korea require young people to spend a mandatory two years in military service. Would you support such a program, or a similar public-works “service corps,” in the United States?
- How have militaries and war changed since the declaration of Armistice Day? How are they the same?
- It has been said that whatever weapons are used in World War III, World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. (This quotation is often attributed to Albert Einstein’s conversations concerning the atom bomb’s debut). What do you think of this assertion?
Readings
Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
March 4, 1865
Lincoln’s address is a one of the most profound meditations on the justifications for and costs of war ever written. Weighing in at 703 words, it is our nation’s second shortest inaugural address in our nation’s history (Washington’s second inaugural at 135 words is the shortest). Lincoln chose unadorned words—505 had just one syllable—for this wartime speech. Frederick Douglass, who was in the crowd that day, wrote in his journal, “The address sounded more like a sermon than a state paper.”[1] Lincoln quotes Scripture four times, and repeatedly invokes prayer (“fervently do we pray”). Like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech (which is reprinted in the MLK Day section), Lincoln uses the metaphor of an unpaid debt, but in Lincoln’s tragic description the debt to God for the Nation’s sin of slavery must be expunged “if God wills that it continue … until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” The address’s irenic final prayer serves as the official motto of our nation’s Department of Veterans Affairs: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.” The historian Harry S. Stout, in analyzing the final passage, observed: “ incarnated an enduring civil religion of America the Redeemer Nation. At the same time, they ordained its prophet, soon to become its martyred messiah. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural provided the interpretive and mythic context that not only explained America to itself, but also explained America to the world.”[2]
Fellow-Countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war–seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Endnotes
Poems and Songs
Poems and Songs for Veterans Day
In keeping with the holiday’s history, we have included poems and songs with different styles and themes. “The Reuben James” and “Over There” are rousing calls to arms. Other songs evoke the tradition of armistice by focusing on the end of war and the soldiers who return and those who do not. Additional songs about veterans who have perished (such as “Two Soldiers”) can be found in our Memorial Day materials.
Troop Train
By Karl Shapiro
In this poem, Karl Shapiro illustrates aspects of the soldiering life away from the battlefield, during secondment or in civilian cities as troops are moved to or from the front. He combines imagery which captures the comfort of civilian life (“kids scream as at a circus”) with images and metaphors illustrative of the grittiness and roughness of life in the armed services (“deliberate, grimy, slightly drunk we crawl”). In the final stanza Shapiro links these images to the duality of life and death—where the deathly machinery of war and soldiering will ultimately result in the return of life’s “brilliant” gaiety again.
Their oily arms in good salute and grin.
Kids scream as at a circus. Business men
Glance hopefully and go their measured way.
And women standing at their dumbstruck door
More slowly wave and seem to warn us back,
As if a tear blinding the course of war
Might once dissolve our iron in their sweet wish.
We hang as from a cornucopia
In total friendliness, with faces bunched
To spray the streets with catcalls and with leers.
A bottle smashes on the moving ties
And eyes fixed on a lady smiling pink
Stretch like a rubber-band and snap and sting
The mouth that wants the drink-of-water kiss.
Deliberate, grimy, slightly drunk we crawl,
The good-bad boys of circumstance and chance,
Whose bucket-helmets bang the empty wall
Where twist the murdered bodies of our packs
Next to the guns that only seem themselves.
And distance like a strap adjusted shrinks,
Tightens across the shoulder and holds firm.
Dealer, deal me my luck, a pair of bulls,
The right draw to a flush, the one-eyed jack.
Diamonds and hearts are red but spades are black,
And spades are spades and clubs are clovers—black.
But deal me winners, souvenirs of peace.
This stands to reason and arithmetic,
Luck also travels and not all come back.
And trains to death or trucks, and trucks to death,
Or trucks lead to the march, the march to death,
Or that survival which is all our hope;
And death leads back to trucks and trains and ships,
But life leads to the march, O flag! at last
The place of life found after trains and death—
Nightfall of nations brilliant after war.
Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier
W.H. Auden
In this poem, W.H. Auden—one of the most notable poets of his time—asks us to reflect on the purposes and goals of war and to honor the memory of those passed.
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
October 1953
Dreamers
Siegfried Sassoon
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?
by Langston Hughes
World War II.
I write this letter
Hoping times will be better
When this war
Is through.
I'm a Tan-skinned Yank
Driving a tank.
I ask, WILL V-DAY
BE ME-DAY, TOO?
I've done the enemy much harm,
I've driven back
The Germans and the Japs,
From Burma to the Rhine.
On every battle line,
I've dropped defeat
Into the Fascists' laps.
Out to defend my land
Army, Navy, Air Corps—
I am there.
I take munitions through,
I fight—or stevedore, too.
I face death the same as you do
Everywhere.
Where he fell.
I've watched him dying
I promised him that I would try
To make our land a land
Where his son could be a man—
And there'd be no Jim Crow birds
Left in our sky.
When we see Victory's glow,
Will you still let old Jim Crow
Hold me back?
When all those foreign folks who've waited—
Italians, Chinese, Danes—are liberated.
Will I still be ill-fated
Because I'm black?
Will the Jim Crow laws still stand?
Will Dixie lynch me still
When I return?
Or will you comrades in arms
From the factories and the farms,
Have learned what this war
Was fought for us to learn?
Will I be safe from harm—
Or will you do me
As the Germans did the Jews?
When I've helped this world to save,
Shall I still be color's slave?
Or will Victory change
Your antiquated views?
To smash the Fascists' might.
You can't say I wasn't with you
in each battle.
As a soldier, and a friend.
When this war comes to an end,
Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car
Like cattle?
At home and take your stand
For Democracy?
That's all I ask of you.
When we lay the guns away
To celebrate
Our Victory Day
WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?
That's what I want to know.
Sincerely,
GI Joe.
The Sinking of the Reuben James
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
In this song, Woody Guthrie unapologetically honors the sacrifice of our armed service members. The Reuben James was a four-funnel destroyer that was the first U.S. naval ship sunk by German U-boats in World War II. On October 31, 1941, it was torpedoed while it was escorting a convoy near Iceland. Of the 159-man crew, only 44 survived. A list of the survivors and of the dead can be found at www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/logs/DD/dd245-cas.html#EnclA.
Chords
/ G G D G / G G D G / G G C G / G G D G / / G G C C / D D C D / (2x)
Manned by hard fighting men both of honor and fame?
She flew the Stars and Stripes of the land of the free
But tonight she's in her grave at the bottom of the sea.
Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?
What were their names, tell me, what were their names?
Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James
When that good ship went down only forty-four were saved.
'Twas the last day of October we saved the forty-four
From the cold ocean waters and the cold icy shore.
That we watched for the U-boats and waited for a fight.
Then a whine and a rock and a great explosion roared
And they laid the Reuben James on that cold ocean floor.
In the farms and in the cities they're telling of the fight.
And now our mighty battleships will steam the bounding main
And remember the name of that good Reuben James.
Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
Words and Music Ed McCurdy (1950)
This anti-war classic has been recorded by 100 of artists in dozens of languages. In November 1989, television cameras captured East German school children singing the song en masse as the Berlin Wall fell.
Chords
/ C – F C / G EmAm DmG C / F C G C / F C G C/
I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war
I dreamed I saw a might room filled with women & men
And the paper they were signing said they’d never fight again
They all joined hands & bowed their heads & gratefully prayers were prayed
And the people in the streets below were dancing round & round
While swords & guns & uniforms were scattered on the ground
No Man’s Land
Words and Music by Eric Bogle (1976)
Eric Bogle wrote this song about World War I after visiting the military cemeteries in Flanders and Northern France.
Chords
/ G G C Am / D D G D / G G C Am / D D C G / / G G Am Am / D D G D / G G Am Am / D D C G / / D D C G / D D C G / Am Am D D / G C D G /
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
I'll rest here awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, Lord, and I'm nearly done.
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916--
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean,
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing "The Last Post" in chorus?
Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest?"
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always 19?
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause?'
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Over There
Words and Music: George M. Cohan (1917)
This patriotic call to arms was written by Cohan shortly after the U.S. declared war against Germany in April 1917. After the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, the Communist Party of the United States used the slogan “The Yanks Are Not Coming,” in direct opposition to the Cohan’s phrase to signal their isolationist view that the United States should not become involved in the Second World War. However, after Adolf Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the party line changed to fervent support for US involvement in the war and the slogan likewise changed from “The Yanks Are Not Coming!” to “The Yanks Are Not Coming Too Late!”
Chords
/ A A A A / Bm Bm Bm Bm / E7 E A7 A / B7 Bm E7 E / / A A A A / A A A A / D E A A / E7 D E7 E7 / / A A A A / A A A A / A A E7 E / A D E7 EA /
Take it on the run, on the run, on the run.
Hear them calling, you and me,
Every son of liberty.
Make your daddy glad to have had such a lad.
Tell your sweetheart not to pine,
To be proud her boy's in line.
Send the word, send the word over there
That the Yanks are coming, The Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming ev'rywhere.
So prepare, say a pray'r,
Send the word, send the word to beware.
We'll be over, we're coming over,
And we won't come back till it's over
Over there.
Johnnie show the Hun who's a son of a gun.
Hoist the flag and let her fly,
Yankee Doodle do or die.
Yankee to the ranks, from the towns and the tanks.
Make your mother proud of you,
And to liberty be true.
Song of Peace
Words: Lloyd Stone Music: Jean Sibelius
This song was written in 1934 between the first and second world wars by the American poet, Lloyd Stone and is set to melody of Sibelius’ Finlandia Hymn. We like it because it both stresses the primacy of one’s own country and acknowledges the equal claims of people from other countries.
Chords
/ C F CAm GC / C F CG C / C Am C GDm / Dm C Am G C /
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
this is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.
Trivia Challenge
Further Resources
CrossFit Veterans Day Workout
11 Rounds for Time
- 400 meter Run
- 11 Dumbbell Thrusters (2×50/35 lb)
- 11 Burpees
With a running clock, complete 11 rounds of the prescribed work as fast as possible. Score is the time on the clock when the last round of the Burpees is completed.
Other Suggested Readings and Songs
For other poetry on war and remembrance, see John McCrae, In Flanders Fields (1918) (also featured in Memorial Day Section); Robert Lowell, For the Union Dead (Noonday Press 1964); Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth (1917); Li Po, Nefarious War (c. 750); Siegfried Sassoon, Does It Matter? (1917); Sassoon, Aftermath (1920); and William Shakespeare, St. Crispin’s Day Speech, in Henry V (1599).
For other songs on the subject, see Sarah Flower Adams, Nearer My God to Thee (1841) (tune to which the survivors of Pickett’s Charge returned to battle during the Civil War, and one of the songs played by the band aboard the RMS Titanic before it sank); Paper Lace, Billy, Don’t Be a Hero (1965); Peter La Farge, The Ballad of Ira Hayes (c. 1963); and John Michael Montgomery, Letters from Home (2004).
Notes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Reuben_James_(DD-245)
http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/r5/reuben_james-i.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man’s_Land_(Eric_Bogle_song)
http://exclaim.ca/Reviews/Dvd/good_bye_lenin-wolfgang_becker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_McCurdy#cite_note-1
http://members.iglou.com/jtmajor/SovWorl.htm
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln2.asp
http://www.fifeschools.com/cjh/news/newsitems/veteransdaypoems.htm
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/240598
http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp
www.va.gov/opa/publications/celebrate/vamotto.pdf
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