January 1, 1942 had been set aside by President Roosevelt as a Day of Prayer. He had good reason for doing this; it was a dark time. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor just a few weeks before. Then Hitler declared war on the United States. America was suddenly at war with the greatest military powers in Europe and in Asia. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was Roosevelt’s guest at the White House for strategic discussions. They spent a memorable, and very American, New Year’s Day together.

From August to the last week of December, as David McCullough writes, “1776 had been as dark a time as those devoted to the American Cause had ever known.” As the year ended, despite the stunning and historic victory at Trenton the day after Christmas, there was good reason to fear that Washington’s army would dissolve and with it any hopes for the American Cause. Washington pleaded with the men to stay on another month. The fate of liberty depended on them.

Often our New Year’s resolutions are lighthearted, and usually, the flesh being weak, they are fleeting. Before Valentine’s Day or maybe even before Epiphany, we have slipped back into our old ways. But these lighthearted resolutions reflect a deeper, more serious impulse.

At the time of the American founding, celebrations of Christmas in America varied widely, from Puritans and Quakers who shunned or ignored it, to other Protestants and Catholics who honored it in their own Christian ways, to those who spent the day in “riot and dissipation,” like an ancient Roman Saturnalia. But E Pluribus Unum—out of many one—was the American motto on the Great Seal, and over the generations, out of many ways of celebrating or ignoring Christmas, came a recognizably American way.

Among many days worthy of remembrance, one that is often forgotten is June 8, 1789, when James Madison, in the first Congress under the newly ratified Constitution, addressed the House in a historic speech. The government had been operating for only a few months. Several states had submitted proposed amendments to the Constitution which Madison encouraged Congress to consider and worked to consolidate and draft himself. The result would be what the world now knows as the Bill of Rights.

December 7, 2021 is the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into World War II. It is one of many days in the American year that inspire reflection on the most violent and determinative human event: war—and the art of war that aims to control and direct that most uncontrollable human undertaking.

In January, 1835, the first volume of a book named Democracy in America was published in Paris. It was a great critical and commercial success. The author, a young French aristocrat named Alexis de Tocqueville, became a celebrity and was awarded cherished honors and prizes. And his book stood the test of time. Almost two hundred years later, it is still regarded by many learned and able judges to be the best book ever written about democracy and about America.

Sarah Josepha Hale was born in New Hampshire in 1788. In an era when the average American life expectancy was forty years, she lived until 1879—91 years—and has been remembered by posterity primarily for two things: the poem popularly known as “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and the American tradition of Thanksgiving. Hale made herself “one of the most influential women of the nineteenth century.”

The American story isn’t just history. We write the American story ourselves every day with the choices we make as individuals and as a country.

“Chesty” Puller was a Marine’s Marine. To this day, in Marine Corps boot camp, recruits are exhorted, “Do one more for Chesty! Chesty Puller never quit!” His combat service record is astonishing: he is the most decorated Marine in history. Chesty insisted that he did not love fighting. But if there was a fight, he wanted in on it, and he generally was. But the fighting spirit is not the only reason Chesty is revered by Marines. Bravery in combat is expected. He embodied something more.