Lancaster High School - Mirage Yearbook (Lancaster, OH)

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LANCASTER HIGH

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MIRAGE 9 OUR NATIONAL HOLIDAYS By ELLEN HENRY. A HOLIDAY, as we often think of it, is a day on which we are freed from our common duties; but a mere limited use of the word and the one which we shall take is that of a day set apart from the others by custom or by state or national authority. Now. as to the purpose of these days. To be sure most of them commemorate the doing of some great deed or the birth of a renowned person, but there is a still deeper purpose. They are days on which we should think and days which should be marked by a striving for higher ideals. Our first holiday, New Years, Is of ancient origin and brought to us by custom. It has, in England and Scotland, for many years, been celebrated by games and feasts. It has long been the custom to see the old year out and the new one in. The day is as we term it, a milestone on the road of time. It is the day on which one looks back at the departing year and on to the future one, a time when a mingled feeling of pleasure and seriousness takes possession of us and when we face the future with new' determination, saying witn Lincoln, “Let us more highly resolve.” And now these next days belong to the American people alone. Two of them, days in February, are the anniversaries of the birth of two men to whom we are indebted for the preservation of this country. In Virginia, on February twenty-second, in seventeen hundred thirty-two, George Washington, the father of our country, was born. He was only a young man when he gave himself and his labors to be used for his country; and through all his labors and sufferings we see not the least sign of a selfish desire for honor or praise, it was he who first put the wheels of the government in motion. On the twelfth of February, eighteen hundred nine, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky. He, contrasted with Washington, was born almost into poverty, but similar to Washington, was born with a strong intellect and a noble heart. By his efforts our country was again freed, this time from the bonds of slavery. Now the observance of these days is not chiefly to do honor to Washington and Lincoln; they do not need it now; but do not the people of today need the example and guidance of the lives of these men as