Each June, our nation takes time for a different sort of holiday. It isn’t focused on family or tradition. It doesn’t directly mark history or honor anyone in particular. each year, we take a day to celebrate our flag.

At first glance, it seems like an entirely jingoistic phenomenon and at its surface, it is.

The day doesn’t mark the date of a battle or the end of a war. It isn’t commemorated in memory of the fallen or to mark a major turning point in our national history.

Although it marks an actual historic event, it’s hardly one at the level of the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the Confederacy’s surrender in the Civil War.

In fact, although it marks an event from the early days of our republic, it wasn’t even recognized until the early 1900s when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed June 14, the date in 1777 when the Continental Congress adopted the original composition of the Stars and Stripes.

At the heart of that decision was an official, national adoption of something already common in the country. In the late 1800s, schools began holding informal flag day programs, though not all on the same date, as part of integrating the large number of immigrants entering the country at the time into the community.

As the symbol of our nation, programs highlighting the flag were useful as far more than unquestioning allegiance to a symbol. They provided a way to delve into the something far more important, the principles and beliefs that symbol represents.

A flag itself is only a piece of cloth. It’s image is just that, merely an image. Like any symbol, it has no inherent value on its own and provides no reason to show it respect or awe.

The things it stands for — Jefferson’s rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”; Roosevelt’s “test of our progress” and Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” among scores of others — are what give the flag value. It is not important or deserving of honor simply by virtue of being a symbol of the United States. Just as blind patriotism without support for underlying principles is no real patriotism at all; blind allegiance to a symbol without support for those things for which it stands is a meaningless and hollow gesture.

So this weekend, we should all take a moment to really reflect on what our flag stands for and what we in turn stand for when we honor it.

— JP