Veterans Day History and Tradition

Veterans Day, originally called Armistice Day is the anniversary of the symbolic end of World War I on 11 November 1918. It commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month."

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as Armistice Day to remind Americans of the tragedies of war. A 1938 law made the day a federal holiday. In 1954, Congress changed the holiday's name to Veterans Day to honor all United States veterans.

Veterans Day honors men and women who have served in the United States armed services. Veterans Day is a legal federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated on November 11th. The United Kingdom celebrates November 11 as Armistice Day. Canada has a legal holiday called Remembrance Day that is celebrated on November 11. Veterans Day celebrations in the United States include parades and speeches. Special services are held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, on Veterans Day. Traditionally, ceremonies begin at 11 o'clock, when the President and other dignitaries lay a wreath to honor their service.

The poppy's significance to Remembrance Day is a result of Canadian military physician John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields". The poppy emblem was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I, their red colour an appropriate symbol for the bloodshed of trench warfare.
The wearing of poppies in honor of America's war dead is traditionally done on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

The VFW conducted its first poppy distribution before Memorial Day in 1922, becoming the first veterans' organization to organize a nationwide distribution. The poppy soon was adopted as the official memorial flower of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.

In 1923 the VFW decided that VFW "Buddy Poppies" be assembled by disabled and needy veterans who would be paid for their work to provide them with some form of financial assistance.

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