10:45 am Wednesday, November 11, 2026 at Veterans Memorial Park, 700 Cushman Street
The Alaska Peace Center, North Star Veterans For Peace Chapter 146, and Fairbanks Peace Choir invite you to a celebration of Armistice Day (DRESS WARMLY!)
Bring a bell if you have one (we’ll have extras if you don’t), in any case bring a friend. The bell-ringing will start promptly at 11:00. The Peace Choir will lead us in some songs after the bell-ringing ceremony.
Bell-ringing has been a traditional way of celebrating Armistice Day ever since the end of World War One (known at the time as “The Great War”) 108 years ago. It signifies the relief and joy felt around the world when the Armistice was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Bells were rung to celebrate peace and the end of four years of war that killed or wounded more than 21 million people. A tradition of observing the anniversary of the Armistice by ringing bells to honor veterans and promote peace spread throughout the world.
In the U.S., Armistice Day was first officially recognized by Congress in 1926 as a day that “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations,” and “with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.” It became a legal holiday nationwide by an act of Congress in 1938, dedicated to the cause of world peace. In 1954 Congress changed the name of the holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. In his proclamation on the first Veterans Day in 1954, President Eisenhower admonished Americans to “reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.” However, in contrast to Eisenhower’s intention, rebranding Armistice Day as Veterans Day has led to a change from celebrating peace to celebrating the military and glorifying war. Armistice Day has been flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.
In recent years our country has increasingly used war and militarism as foreign policy against all norms of morality and international law, even baldly using “might makes right” as a justification for abandoning diplomacy. With an unnecessary war in Ukraine; a foolish and illegal war in Iran causing global economic distress; an ongoing genocide in Palestine propagated largely with American weapons, money, and diplomatic cover; and extrajudicial assassinations, kidnappings, and deadly sanctions regimes in Latin America, there is much peace work to be done.
The Alaska Peace Center, the Fairbanks Peace Choir, and Veterans For Peace nationally and locally celebrates the original intent of November 11th – as a day to rededicate ourselves to work toward peaceful solutions to the world’s problems. Diplomacy and peace, not war, is the best way to honor the sacrifices of veterans. We are not free until we are all free!
Bring your prayers for Peace, bring your vision of Peace and well-being for all. Let us step up in Peace, to peaceably communicate our hopes and fears. And Ring and Sing for Peace! Peace is the Way.
Photos: Top: “Kids Peace Parade” in Nenana, November 1918 at the close of World War I. This is a photograph of the original photo hanging in the Nenana Railroad Museum.
Bottom: Armistice Day Bell-Ringing Commemoration at Veterans Memorial Park, 2022.
For further reading:
Excellent essay on the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Opinion page.
Veterans For Peace 2026 Armistice Day page.
Essay by Skip Oliver, Veterans For Peace, on an earlier Armistice Day.
