What does Flag Day celebrate?

Flag Day celebrates the adoption of the first official flag of the United States. On June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), passed a brief Flag Resolution: Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation. That single sentence created the national flag, replacing the various colonial banners, regimental colors, and the early Continental Colors (also called the Grand Union Flag) that had flown over American forces during the first year of the Revolutionary War.

The act came almost a year after the Continental Congress had voted for independence on July 2, 1776, adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and during the same period in which it was working on the Articles of Confederation. The Flag Resolution did not specify how the stars should be arranged, the proportions of the flag, or whether the stars should have five or six points, leaving design details to flagmakers; this is why early flags varied widely in arrangement, including the famous circle pattern often associated with Betsy Ross.

The first widely recognized public Flag Day observance was organized in 1885 by Bernard J. Cigrand, a Wisconsin schoolteacher, and the holiday spread through state and local proclamations until President Woodrow Wilson issued the first national Flag Day proclamation on May 30, 1916. President Harry S. Truman signed the National Flag Day Act on August 3, 1949 (Public Law 81-203), making June 14 a permanent national observance, though not a federal public holiday.

The day is thus a moment to mark the moment when the Stars and Stripes was born as the official national emblem, and when the new United States chose for itself a visual identity distinct from Britain's Union Jack and the colonies' separate flags. Customary observances include flying the flag on public and private buildings, parades, naturalization ceremonies, school programs, the retirement of worn flags by veterans organizations, and the Pause for the Pledge of Allegiance, a simultaneous nationwide recitation at 7 p.m. Eastern Time enacted by Public Law 99-54 in 1985 and centered annually at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where the flag that inspired the national anthem was flown.