These are Ives childhood memories of American holidays throughout the year. The Holidays Symphony recollects four of these in each of the four parts of the symphony. Some critics have compared this to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Ives might have meant it to remind Americans about the beauty of their country in a time when the United States emerged as a super power.
Ives finished it in 1913, and suffered a heart attack in 1918. Rumour says he got excited during a debate with Franklin D. Roosevelt about the minimal value of war bonds. After that heart attack Ives didn’t write much music anymore. He tried to finish what he already started, but left a lot of his works unfinished when he died in 1954.