(iPoster) Contested Commemorations: U.S. Historical Holidays and Polarization

• In Event: Poster Session: Politics and History

Abstract

In the contemporary United States, historical commemorations have become a key arena of political conflict. Holidays that once appeared civic and consensual, are increasingly contested – reframed, renamed, expanded, or abolished through partisan struggles over national identity. This paper examines how historical holidays function as instruments of memory politics and how they reflect – and potentially help reproduce – political polarization in 21st-century America. It focuses on the post-2010 period, when “memory wars” escalated alongside partisan sorting and affective polarization, with symbolic conflict intensifying after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

The study advances an institutional and constructivist account of commemorative politics. From a constructivist perspective, public holidays operate as symbolic infrastructures that translate selective historical narratives into routinized civic practice. From an institutional perspective, holiday politics is a domain of formal rulemaking in which legislatures and executives institutionalize preferred memory regimes by legally defining what the polity should celebrate, mourn, or reinterpret. The paper asks four core questions: Which historical holidays become politically polarizing? Who drives commemorative change? And how does partisan competition shape legislative outcomes in the domain of public commemoration? What factors influence the institutionalization of holidays in the state?

Empirically, the paper introduces an original dataset of 468 legislative initiatives related to historical holidays in the United States, covering federal and state-level bills and resolutions from 2010 to 2025. The quantitative analysis uses regression models to estimate how partisan control and state ideological orientation predict the introduction of holiday-related initiatives. To capture the meaning-making dynamics behind institutional change, the statistical results are complemented by qualitative discourse analysis of political rhetoric and policy debates, as well as case studies of prominent commemorative controversies, including Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Juneteenth, and state-level observances linked to the Confederate past.

The findings show that holiday politics is not merely a cultural “side issue,” but a structured form of symbolic governance embedded in partisan competition. Legislative initiatives to revise, replace, or expand historical holidays are disproportionately introduced by Democratic actors, while Republican-led coalitions more frequently mobilize in defense of established commemorative traditions. Across model specifications, measures of economic development – such as GDP – do not meaningfully predict adoption outcomes, underscoring that these conflicts are driven less by material resources than by symbolic alignment. Demographic factors play more limited and issue-specific roles: larger Italian American communities are associated with greater resistance to repealing Columbus Day, whereas higher proportions of Native populations increase the likelihood of adopting Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Overall, however, partisan configuration remains the most consistent and powerful predictor of commemorative change across states. The qualitative analysis further demonstrates that these conflicts are sustained by competing narratives of the nation – one emphasizing inclusion, historical redress, and recognition of marginalized experiences; the other prioritizing continuity, heritage, and resistance to perceived “erasure” of American history.

By linking memory politics to contemporary polarization, this paper contributes to debates on how states institutionalize contested narratives of the past and how symbolic governance can weaken shared civic reference points that democratic bargaining and coexistence depend on.

It shows that historical holidays are a distinctive form of political symbol: unlike monuments or museums, holidays are cyclical, routinized, and socially immersive, making them especially effective sites for identity formation and boundary making. The paper argues that struggles over commemorative calendars reflect deeper transformations in American political identity – and can normalize polarization through everyday civic life.

Author

• Unregistered Participant