Stafford County's Removal of Veterans Day Reflects Misplaced Priorities Favoring Foreign Religious Holidays
Source: Breccan F. Thies. "VA County Considers Axing Veterans Day Holiday For Islamic Ones." September 24, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The article argues that a Virginia school board is making a mistake by considering the removal of Veterans Day as a school holiday while keeping days off for Islamic and Hindu holidays. The author suggests this reflects poor priorities, especially given that Stafford County has many veteran residents, and implies a troubling pattern of deprioritizing recognition of military veterans in favor of newer multicultural observances.
Conclusion
Stafford County School Board is wrong to consider removing Veterans Day as a school holiday while continuing to grant days off for Islamic and Hindu holidays, given the county's significant veteran population.
Premises
- The county has increasingly added days off for non-Christian holidays (Yom Kippur, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Diwali) in recent years.
- This proliferation of holiday observances is a key factor preventing the county from meeting Virginia's 180-instructional-day requirement.
- Stafford County has a substantial veteran population (roughly 12% of residents, ~20,000 people) due to its proximity to D.C. and Marine Corps Base Quantico.
- Removing Veterans Day specifically, rather than reducing other newly-added holidays, sends a message that veterans are less valued than other groups.
- Fairfax County already removed Veterans Day as a holiday while keeping Indigenous Peoples' Day, suggesting a pattern of deprioritizing veteran recognition relative to other cultural observances.
- A school board member's own remarks (Patricia Healy) acknowledge discomfort with removing Veterans Day given the many other holidays that have been added.
Assumptions
- Veterans Day deserves preservation as a school holiday due to its significance to military service members and the local community.
- Adding holidays for religious/cultural groups like Muslims and Hindus is a deviation from a prior, more traditional calendar norm rather than a natural accommodation of a diversifying population.
- There is an implicit zero-sum framing: preserving new cultural holidays necessarily comes at the expense of traditional/patriotic ones like Veterans Day.
- Symbolic school holidays are the appropriate/primary way to honor and respect veterans (as opposed to in-class observances, which the superintendent proposed as an alternative).
- The trend of adding non-Christian holidays represents an overreach or an example of poor institutional priorities, rather than a legitimate response to demographic changes in the student population.