This is the month for rites of Passage. At least that is my take on the month of June. Most of us recognize that June and Brides go together like peanut butter and jelly. Marriage is one of the traditional rites.
It has always seemed to me that graduation, traditionally High School ones, are a logical precursor for the June weddings. Unfortunately weddings and June are not the slam dunk they used to be. Weddings in general do not seem to be so popular among the younger set.
Everyone knows that June is the home of the Summer Solstice. That means the longest sunlit day of the year is in June. I must admit that this year has seemed pretty cloudy most of the time but I would bet that sunrise to sunset time is still occurs above the clouds this June.
That is surely a passage. It changes from the daylight getting longer to the daylight getting shorter. It’s a little like, for us older folks; everything is getting shorter. A year doesn’t take near as much time as it used to.
Speaking of older folks, those of us who were around in 1944 June remember that was when D-Day occurred. For those of you who weren’t around, that was when the allies in WWII invaded Normandy. It was the rite of passage from a bombing war to a land action war and the beginning of the end of WWII. Unfortunately it was not the end of war itself.
Speaking of wars, June is the time of the Battle of Bunker Hill occurred on June 17 1775. Now that was prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So it might be called the beginning of our passage from Colonies to Country.
There are a couple of other June days that have the same date. That is June 19th. They are about different aspects of our Civil War The first is known as Juneteenth. That is the day in 1865 that it was announced in Texas that the slaves had made the passage from slavery to freedom. Actually it was two and a half years after Lincoln signed the Executive Order. There was no TV or social media in those days. Some folks still argue that the freedom is not yet, 152 years later, completely enacted.
The second was started a year later, in 1866. It is less well known and has a couple of names. It is only celebrated in Southern (Confederate) states. In Texas it is called Confederate Heroes day. It is a memorial day for the quarter of a million confederate soldiers that fell in the Civil was.
Both of those Holidays are reflections on keeping the union that was formed by the Revolutionary War a Union. They also reflect that the debate, and quite eloquently, isn’t yet completely over.
That the issues of wars are not yet resolved point out that June has more rites of passages to effect as the future unfolds.
