Kings Day – Wear Orange
Pella, Iowa • May 2, 2026
Every May, Pella turns orange.
The tulips open, the klompen echo on Franklin Street, and a small Iowa
town remembers a story older than its storefronts and windmills. Kings
Day—rooted in the Dutch Koningsdag tradition—has become one of the Midwest’s
most joyful civic rituals. But beneath the pastries and parades lies a history
that speaks directly to our cultural moment, and perhaps to an opportunity
national leadership could have embraced.
A Festival Born From Flight
Pella was founded in 1847 by Dutch immigrants fleeing religious
persecution—not from a secular regime, but from a Christian-majority state
church in the Netherlands. The Reformed Church was the official religion,
and dissenters faced fines, harassment, and restrictions on worship. Reverend Hendrik
Scholte and his followers crossed the Atlantic not because they rejected
Christianity, but because they longed for the freedom to practice it without
state interference.
They named their new settlement Pella, after the ancient refuge
where early Christians fled during the Roman-Jewish conflict. It was a
theological declaration: faith flourishes when it is not coerced.
Kings Day in Pella is not merely a cultural festival; it is a living
reminder that religious liberty is fragile, precious, and often misunderstood.
A Missed Moment for National
Leadership
This year’s celebration—May 2, 2026—arrived at a time when the country is
wrestling with questions of identity, belonging, and the meaning of freedom. It
was, in many ways, a perfect moment for the administration to highlight a story
that embodies the best of the American experiment: refugees seeking liberty,
building community, and contributing richly to the nation.
A simple acknowledgment—a statement, a visit, even a symbolic nod—could
have underscored themes the country urgently needs:
- the value of
- religious freedom
- the dignity of
- immigrants
- the beauty of
- cultural traditions woven into American life
- the reminder
- that patriotism is strengthened, not threatened, by diversity
Instead, the day passed quietly at the national level. Not with
hostility, but with absence. And absence, too, communicates something.
The Irony of Orange
Kings Day celebrates the Dutch royal family—the House of Orange. The
color is everywhere: banners, pastries, scarves, hats, even bicycles. It is a
color associated with monarchy, symbolism, and public identity.
This year, some observers couldn’t help noticing the irony.
Public conversations in the United States have included concerns about “king‑like”
behavior, the concentration of executive power, and the blurring of lines
between leadership and self‑elevation. Against that backdrop, a festival
celebrating a monarchy—one whose modern role is largely ceremonial—became an
unexpected mirror for American debates about authority and humility.
Layer onto that the fact that orange has, in recent years, become
associated in American political culture with certain public figures—not as a
theological statement, but as a matter of branding, media imagery, and cultural
shorthand. Without naming anyone, it is simply true that the color carries
political resonance.
The result was a quiet, unspoken irony: A festival honoring a symbolic
monarchy highlighted the difference between heritage and self‑exaltation,
between cultural celebration and political performance.
A Field Trip Worth Noticing
While Washington was quiet, Iowa’s students were not.
This year, 70 international students from the University of Iowa,
Kirkwood College, and Mount Mercy University traveled to Pella for Kings Day.
They came from dozens of countries—some secular, some deeply religious, some
where Christianity is a minority faith, and some where it is the majority but
tightly bound to political power.
For many, it was their first encounter with Dutch-American culture. But
more importantly, it was a living classroom on the relationship between faith,
freedom, and civic life. They saw a town celebrating its heritage without
demanding uniformity. They saw Christianity expressed publicly without being
enforced politically. They saw a community that remembers its past without
weaponizing it.
In a moment when global tensions around religion and nationalism are
rising, that is no small lesson.
The Volunteers Who Make It Work
Kings Day does not happen on its own. It is carried by Pella’s
volunteers—church leaders, civic organizers, and a handful of drivers who
shuttled students across the beautiful rolling, unplanted Iowa farmlands
throughout the day.
This year, the work of International Neighbors was indispensable.
Its leader coordinated the entire field trip with a kind of tireless
logistical smoothness that would make a Dutch engineer proud—routes mapped,
schedules aligned, students welcomed, and every moving part held together with
quiet competence. Without that leadership, the day simply would not have
happened.
For the 70 international students, these volunteers were their first
ambassadors to Pella. They offered rides, answered questions, shared stories,
and embodied the hospitality that has long defined the town.
Vermeer: A Global Story Rooted in
Faith
No account of Pella is complete without mentioning Vermeer, the
family‑owned, Christian‑led global manufacturing company headquartered in town.
Known worldwide for agricultural and industrial equipment, Vermeer has long
integrated faith, craftsmanship, and service into its corporate identity.
Its presence in Pella is more than economic. It is cultural and
spiritual. Vermeer’s global reach—stretching across continents—stands as a
modern echo of Pella’s founding story: a small community shaped by faith,
sending its influence far beyond its borders.
For international students visiting Kings Day, Vermeer offered a glimpse
of how Christian conviction can shape a global enterprise without coercion or
spectacle.
Why This Matters Now
Pella’s history pushes back against the assumption that festivals like
Kings Day are quaint distractions. It reminds us that:
- Religious
- liberty is not a slogan; it is a lived experience.
- Immigrant
- stories are not threats; they are testimonies.
- Cultural
- traditions are not relics; they are bridges.
- Leadership is
- not only about policy; it is also about imagination.
Kings Day could have been a moment for national leadership to highlight
that vision. It wasn’t. But the absence of national attention does not diminish
the significance of what happened in Pella.
Seventy international students saw a living example of religious freedom.
Volunteers embodied service. A global Christian company reflected faith in
action. And a festival born from persecution became, once again, a celebration
of liberty.
Wear Orange
In the Netherlands, orange symbolizes unity under a royal house. In
Pella, it symbolizes something deeper: the courage to flee oppression, the
freedom to worship, and the joy of a community that remembers where it came
from.
And this year, it also symbolized a gentle, unspoken irony: that
sometimes the color of kings can remind us what true leadership is—and what it
is not.