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Notes -
Why celebrate the occupation and not the declaration? 4th of July celebrates a purely formal act, and not when the British lost control of anything.
It was originally a local holiday on the gulf coast in Texas, which seems eminently reasonable. Why pick this one and not one of what I’m sure are a dozen other local African American holidays I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable arbitrary decision to make.
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It seems that it was initially a niche holiday in certain parts of Texas, so maybe that's why they cared about the emancipation of Texas.
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I agree with this criticism, but it’s worth noting that the declaration was in December, which is already pretty holiday-heavy, and which doesn’t have the best weather in most of the country. Whereas most people would welcome an extra day off in June, which didn’t previously have any federal holidays.
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