Long, grueling hours of pressured sitting and absorbing of information, stretching into the afternoon, run abundant in classrooms across the borough. Sluggish, tortoise-like in their slithering nature.
Tick. Tock.
But there is a short respite before that glorious light at the end of the academic year’s tunnel.
With the annual Brooklyn-Queens Day approaching on June 4, many school-age children are giddy with a sense of anticipation not entirely characteristic for early June. After all, with nearly a month of classes left before summer vacation, those roaming ice-cream trucks and green patches of park, just waiting to be run through with a bat and mitt, are beginning to look even more tantalizingly forbidden.
In, comes the long-favored Brooklyn-Queens Day, saving many of those precocious lads from hours of longing staring at the verdant yards outside and providing what many of them would argue is a much-needed rest-stop before the long haul toward the year’s end.
Yet it would seem that few of these children and even adults know why it is that this day is held in enough regard to close the schools’ doors for an entire day. After all, even Valentine’s Day, despite its tenacious hold on the forefront of popular culture, still does not warrant an official, academic day off.
“Most of us thought it was a borough-wide pride day, but all we really cared about was getting a
day off in June,” said Samantha LoSapio, 24, a resident of Sheepshead Bay. “There weren't exactly many holidays close to the end of the school year.”
This mysterious holiday’s origins, however, have little to do with celebrating officiated hooky from school with little to no tradition.
It began as a Protestant tradition called “Anniversary Day” in 1829, celebrating the founding of the first Sunday school on Long Island. Numerous parades would be planned for the duration of the day, effectively excusing youngsters from their scholastic duties in favor of religious promotion and festivity.
The first Thursday of June would be hailed as the day during which the merriment would take place, as State Legislature declared in 1905.
By 1959, Queens jumped on the bandwagon and our magnificent borough’s children had to share the wealth.
Today, however, few people are aware of its humble beginnings.
Whether or not the original intention of the holiday returns, it continues to be popular among children and stays a warm memory with those long past those carefree years of youth.
“Now that I know what it is, it's actually something I would have liked to have known,” LoSapio enthusiastically said. “I knew more about the first school house in St. Augustine Florida than in my own hometown.”
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