Eagle Feathers #169 – Holiday Connections

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

We all love the time we can devote to rest and relaxation and take an intermission from our everyday pattern of work. Students call it a break, the military refers to it as a Leave of Absence or furlough, and it is publicly known as a holiday.

The concept of holiday recognition reverts back to the Roman Empire and before when governments allowed time off for religious pilgrimages and celebrations. On today’s secular calendars, vacation days honor heroes, events, and circumstances. In America, the world’s melting pot, ethnic holidays abound.

Veterans Day

The federal government officially observes ten holidays a year while individual states may observe more or less. Massachusetts officially celebrates eleven, but with the popular Evacuation Day/St. Patrick’s Day and the Battle of Bunker Hill Day it adds up to a patriotic thirteen, followed by many others.

St. Patrick’s Day

Somerville has an historic link with many of these holidays:

• New Year’s Day, January 1 was Paul Revere’s birthday. He was famous for nearly being captured by British cavalry on his ride through what is now Somerville.

New Year’s Day

Patriots raised the first American flag at Prospect Hill on January 1, 1776.

• George Washington’s Birthday is the third Monday in February. Washington organized and led the first Colonial Army from Prospect Hill to Yorktown, Pennsylvania.

George Washington’s Birthday

• Patriot’s day is the third Monday in April. The Battle of Lexington and Concord ended in what is now Somerville. Sixty-five-year-old Somerville resident James Miller was the last patriot to die that day and his final words were, “I am too old to run.”

Patriot’s day

• Bunker Hill Day is June 17 and in 1775 Colonial troops crossed Charlestown Neck from Somerville to fight at Bunker Hill and later withdrew to Winter Hill to regroup. Somerville suffered British shelling and hospitalized the wounded.

Bunker Hill Day

Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., Somerville’s longtime Congressional Representative and Speaker of the House of Representatives was married on Bunker Hill Day.

• Independence Day, July 4, 1776, was the day our American Constitution was signed and is now celebrated. In 1629, Charlestown was founded. In 1631, the first ship built in Massachusetts, the Blessing of the Bay, was launched into the Mystic River at Ten Hills.

• Halloween or All Hollow’s Eve is October 31 and Somerville’s son and captain of its high school basketball team, Bobby Boris Pickett, composed and sang the number one Halloween hit ballad, Monster Mash.

Bobby “Boris” Pickett

• Thanksgiving Day is the fourth Thursday in November. In 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts and in 1621 celebrated their first Thanksgiving. Captain Myles Standish was their military protector and in 1623 was the first known European to explore what is now Charlestown and Somerville.

Thanksgiving Day

• Christmas Day, December 25, George Washington celebrated Christmas with his troops on Somerville’s Prospect Hill in 1775. The next week they raised the first American flag on that summit. The following Christmas Day in 1776, they crossed the icy waters of the Delaware River to victoriously capture the Hessians/German Army at the Battle of Trenton in New Jersey.

Hessian prisoners on Winter Hill brought lasting Christmas gifts to America. Firstly, was the tradition of Christmas trees and secondly, the game of keg legging or nine-pin bowling.

Christmas Day

In 1842, Charles Dickens was working on his next book, A Christmas Carol when he travelled through Somerville … it was the year Somerville was established.

Happy Holidays!