One of the things I remember from my youth was the number of times I ended up folding the US flag. Whether it was for school, my first summer job, the military, or one or two other events I have been in requiring the flag to be put away, it was always folded into a triangular package. I don’t know if this was just the area I grew up in, but the only time I saw a flag stored any other way was when it was for sale in a plastic bag.
It also seems that we are the only country that folds the flag in this way and that most seem to go for a nice straightforward rectangle instead. The one exception to this might be Japan.
Best as I can tell, Japanese and British procedures are roughly the same, except when the Union Flag is used as a coffin pall, in which case it too is folded into a triangle before presentation to the bereaved.
Tiny triangle though. And, in other circumstances, The Union Flag goes as far as Step 3 and then gets rolled and tied and stored in a cylinder. As far as I can make out …
The rolled up forms, it seems, are often prescribed for “Breaking the Flag”, a trick where one uses the hoisting rope to hold it in a cylinder until about halfway up. Give the rope a quick tug and the whole thing unfurls at once. Although supposedly you can do it with the US flag, I have never seen it done.
I saw a “breaking the flag” ceremony once. I was in the USN, serving on a flagship. I was ‘turned out’ on deck to welcome the Secretary of the Navy. Pretty impressive.
Did anyone else play Italian football (now evidently called paper football) when you were younger?
You fold a piece of paper (8.5x11 or A4) into a triangle (whence the tie-in to the thread) and push it across a table trying to get it to stick off the end without falling off. If you do that, then you can kick an extra point with the opponent’s hands making the goal posts. If you push it off the end, then your opponent gets to try a field goal. You kick the football by standing it up with a finger holding the top and flicking it with the middle finger of your other hand. I hadn’t thought of it in ages till this thread came along. Will have to teach my daughter.
Oh yeah, only we called it table-top football or match-book football because we used the paper match-book. That was before all those Bic lighters came along. There was Zippo and the expensive lighters, but, match-books were the freebie you got when you purchased a pack of smokes. I never smoked, still don’t, but, back then I always had a paper match-book in my pocket. People used to laugh when they asked if anyone had a light? I always did, and I was always ready for a game. Geez, I hadn’t thought of that game until you just remembered it.
These were the ceremonial flags that went up on special days. The daily flags flown were smaller (see other postcards). On breezy days the ceremonial flags were difficult both in raising and lowering (think sail power). All flags lowered were folded into the triangular form (to perfection) ceremoniously.
Someone once told me that ‘breaking the flag’ was a way of getting the thing up clear of obstructions so as not to get in an unseemly tangle on a windy day.
My observations prove otherwise. In fact, in the reference to the ceremonial flags being raised there were always two Marines per flag/pole and if the wind was rather brisk or gusty sometimes one of the Marines would be slightly lifted off the feet. No disrespect intended here, just the facts.
When I was in the Scouts, in Norn Iron, we folded the flag into a triangular package - a sort of somosa. That may well have been down to the influence of American films. That was forty years ago.
I tend not to do flags these days. With the possible exception of the Buddhist one and the LGBT one.
