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A Little History from the Winston-Salem Journal Ask Sam column

AlwaysaDeac

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Q: I remember that years ago North Carolina commemorated Easter Monday as a holiday. Why was that, and why did it change?
L.J.
Answer: The Monday after Easter was made an official North Carolina holiday in 1935, but the tradition of the Monday holiday goes back further.

As early as the late 19th century, residents of North Carolina were taking Monday off to “rest up from the holiday,” according to state history files.
Perhaps not too coincidentally, a baseball game between N.C. State College and Wake Forest College was traditionally played on Easter Monday, and one possible explanation for the Easter Monday holiday was that state legislators wanted the day off to attend the game.
According to an essay by John Blythe, the assistant curator for the North Carolina collection of the UNC Chapel Hill Libraries: “For more than 50 years North Carolina celebrated the day after Easter — Easter Monday — as a state holiday. For Tar Heel baby boomers and Gen Xers the holiday meant a long weekend. And, perhaps, it raised some questions as to why they alone among the nation’s schoolchildren had the day off.

“But to earlier generations of North Carolinians, Easter Monday may well have occasioned a trip to Raleigh to watch the annual baseball match between the boys of Wake Forest College and North Carolina State College followed by an evening celebrating or drowning one’s sorrows — depending on the team you supported.”
In addition to the big Wake-State game, Easter Monday games were also played elsewhere, including Winston before it united with Salem. As an 1894 newspaper report worded it: “Easter Monday came in for its full share of attention as a holiday but the atmosphere was too sharp to permit of outdoor enjoyment with any degree of comfort. A number of picnic parties and outings were indefinitely postponed, and much to the regret of the young folks. The Banks, Post Office, etc., closed. Notwithstanding the windy weather the Winston Blues No. 2 played a match game of baseball with Kernersville’s first nine at the latter place Monday afternoon. The Blues were victorious.”


And in 1904, another newspaper report stated: “The baseball game, Monday, on the Twin-City diamond, between the State University and Davidson College, stood 7 to 0 in favor of Davidson. There were about 1,500 persons present and with a gate fee of 50 cents and 25 cents for reserved seats, receipts were sufficient to make the ball teams wear smiling faces. It was a holiday and the folks good-naturedly paid the rather exorbitant revenue.”
It is not, however, clear that the Easter Monday holiday took hold in North Carolina for so long specifically because of baseball. Despite the oral tradition that the day was made a state holiday because of the game, “the veracity of such a claim is in dispute,” Blythe wrote, “since no documents have been found to show a clear relationship between the law’s introduction and the ballgame.”
After years of being the only state observing Easter Monday, North Carolina changed in 1988 and started observing Good Friday as the holiday. Backers of the change said the Monday holiday put businesses out of step with the rest of the country.
 
Q: I remember that years ago North Carolina commemorated Easter Monday as a holiday. Why was that, and why did it change?
L.J.
Answer: The Monday after Easter was made an official North Carolina holiday in 1935, but the tradition of the Monday holiday goes back further.

As early as the late 19th century, residents of North Carolina were taking Monday off to “rest up from the holiday,” according to state history files.
Perhaps not too coincidentally, a baseball game between N.C. State College and Wake Forest College was traditionally played on Easter Monday, and one possible explanation for the Easter Monday holiday was that state legislators wanted the day off to attend the game.
According to an essay by John Blythe, the assistant curator for the North Carolina collection of the UNC Chapel Hill Libraries: “For more than 50 years North Carolina celebrated the day after Easter — Easter Monday — as a state holiday. For Tar Heel baby boomers and Gen Xers the holiday meant a long weekend. And, perhaps, it raised some questions as to why they alone among the nation’s schoolchildren had the day off.

“But to earlier generations of North Carolinians, Easter Monday may well have occasioned a trip to Raleigh to watch the annual baseball match between the boys of Wake Forest College and North Carolina State College followed by an evening celebrating or drowning one’s sorrows — depending on the team you supported.”
In addition to the big Wake-State game, Easter Monday games were also played elsewhere, including Winston before it united with Salem. As an 1894 newspaper report worded it: “Easter Monday came in for its full share of attention as a holiday but the atmosphere was too sharp to permit of outdoor enjoyment with any degree of comfort. A number of picnic parties and outings were indefinitely postponed, and much to the regret of the young folks. The Banks, Post Office, etc., closed. Notwithstanding the windy weather the Winston Blues No. 2 played a match game of baseball with Kernersville’s first nine at the latter place Monday afternoon. The Blues were victorious.”


And in 1904, another newspaper report stated: “The baseball game, Monday, on the Twin-City diamond, between the State University and Davidson College, stood 7 to 0 in favor of Davidson. There were about 1,500 persons present and with a gate fee of 50 cents and 25 cents for reserved seats, receipts were sufficient to make the ball teams wear smiling faces. It was a holiday and the folks good-naturedly paid the rather exorbitant revenue.”
It is not, however, clear that the Easter Monday holiday took hold in North Carolina for so long specifically because of baseball. Despite the oral tradition that the day was made a state holiday because of the game, “the veracity of such a claim is in dispute,” Blythe wrote, “since no documents have been found to show a clear relationship between the law’s introduction and the ballgame.”
After years of being the only state observing Easter Monday, North Carolina changed in 1988 and started observing Good Friday as the holiday. Backers of the change said the Monday holiday put businesses out of step with the rest of the country.

IIRC, BudatWake was who first enlightened me as to this bit of trivia.
 
SAM the Straight Answer Man KICKS ASS.
 
Change to "Straight answer Ma'am" was a formative moment in my childhood.
 
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