I remember when I was growing up, there were certain dates where we would display an American flag above our front door. While rarely used, a special piece of hardware was installed to hold the shortened pole and piece of starred and striped cloth.

Taking the flag out and arranging it in its holder early in the morning on Veteran’s Day, Flag Day (the 14th of June, commemorating the design of Old Glory in 1777), and the Fourth of July was a sort of sacred rite.

Wow, times have changed.

While red, white and blue banners fill store windows declaring revolutionary savings on mattresses or Big Green Egg grills, if you walk down any street in my neighborhood, or, I imagine, most neighborhoods, seeing the American flag on display over a front door is the exception rather than the rule.

I heard a public radio show host comment on the same phenomenon. He reported that, according to a recent Gallup poll, only thirty-eight percent of citizens said they were proud to be Americans.

Popularity of the US government has seen its share of ups and downs over the years, but this statistic got me thinking.

Flags are used for many different purposes. They are containers for symbols like a page might contain words. Symbols are a special sort of language. They are not “the thing,” they represent. Their importance is the meaning people choose to give to them.

When I was growing up, we had a set of encyclopedias. They were dark red, cloth-covered volumes with navy blue and gold trim. They had colored pictures on a number of pages.

The volume with “F” entries was one of my favorites.

I loved looking at the different flags. Flags are often chosen to hold symbols that need to be seen from a great distance.

Nautical flags have different designs to alert other crafts of distress or danger. There are even designs to represent different letters and might be flown to convey more complex messages.

Who could imagine watching an auto race — at Indy, Daytona or Le Mans — without noticing changes in mood and adrenaline at the sight of a checkered flag or yellow flag?

But flags are most notably used for declaring allegiance and belonging.

The blue and yellow flag of Ukraine has been flying over homes, businesses and government buildings worldwide as a gesture of solidarity, as support for Ukrainians who are fighting for their sovereignty.

When I went to college, flags with Greek letters flew over frat houses. Some combinations of letters meant math nerds bunked there. Other combinations stood for perennially tapped kegs and endless foosball games.

In 2019, the city of Cincinnati awarded grants to artists to design flags for their fifty-two official neighborhood, CincyFlags. The project was seen as a way to build community and reinforce local pride.

And I come back to the American flag and reduced sightings on the 4th of July.

The urge to belong to a group, to something larger than yourself, is not history. Sharing a banner with others tied by shared values, will probably never go out of style.

Coming to an agreement about the values you share is another story. Flags are only important if the people who carry them agree on their meaning. Right now, it doesn’t seem that Americans really agree on what we stand for.

It’s easy to get nostalgic about wars we thought we were fighting for liberty or equality, but these days, it seems that most people are very focused on their own lives.

I see plenty of flags waving in the breeze, but they boast of being a proud to be a Chicagoan or gay or a fan of a particular sports team. Most everyone I know longs to BELONG. There are times when people want to trade in “I” for “we.”

Maybe, one day, Americans will agree on core values again. Perhaps we might refresh our flag’s design and hoist it proudly.

Flying your flag is no small thing.