Days of Our Lives and Paulina Price Have Been Celebrating Juneteenth Since 2022 and Salem Does It Better Than Anyone in Daytime

PAULINA PRICE REMINDED SALEM WHY JUNETEENTH MATTERS AND DAYS OF OUR LIVES HAS BEEN SHOWING UP FOR THIS HOLIDAY SINCE 2022

TL;DR: Paulina Price took the stage at Salem’s Juneteenth celebration on Days of Our Lives and delivered a moment the show has been building toward since 2022, when Abe Carver and Paulina made history by marrying on the most significant holiday in African American history. Today Abe almost did not show up. Lexie made sure he did. And the day reminded Salem, and daytime television, why this holiday deserves more than a passing mention.

The Show That Actually Shows Up

When Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021, most of daytime television nodded politely and moved on. Days of Our Lives did something different. In 2022, the show gave Abe Carver and Paulina Price their wedding on Juneteenth, weaving the history of the holiday directly into the ceremony. The bride and groom jumped the broom, honoring the tradition of enslaved people who could not legally marry and created their own sacred rituals in defiance of a system designed to strip them of everything. It was not a throwaway gesture. It was the kind of storytelling that earns its moment.

James Reynolds, who has played Abe Carver for over four decades, said it plainly: he was honored and pleased that the show understood African American history deeply enough to do this right. He also said what many people feel about Juneteenth: that like so many holidays, it risks losing its meaning. That people may not fully understand what it commemorates. That the distance between June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas finally learned they were free, two months after the Civil War had already ended, and today, is both enormous and not nearly enough.

Do you think daytime television does enough to honor Juneteenth and other important cultural holidays? Send your thoughts to amber@soapoperamagazine.com and we might publish them!

What the Holiday Actually Means

Juneteenth marks the day that the last enslaved people in the United States learned of their freedom. Not the day the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Not the day the war ended. The day the news finally arrived. The delay itself is part of the story. It took two and a half years for that information to reach Texas. Two and a half years of continued enslavement after legal freedom had already been declared. The first Juneteenth celebration was held the following year, 1866, in Texas. Families carried the tradition with them as they moved across the country. It spread. It endured. It became a federal holiday in 2021, over a century and a half after that first celebration in Galveston.

In 2023, with Abe recovering from a brain injury and unable to deliver his planned Juneteenth speech, Theo Carver stepped in. He was terrified of public speaking. He delivered the speech anyway, quoting President Obama: Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory or an acceptance of the way things are. It is a celebration of progress. It is an affirmation that, despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible.

Abe Almost Did Not Come and Lexie Brought Him Anyway

Today’s Juneteenth episode carried all of that history into a scene that was equal parts tender and complicated. Abe Carver did not want to attend the celebration. He opted out. And Lexie Carver coerced him into going, which is exactly the kind of thing a daughter does when she knows her father needs to be somewhere even when he cannot see it himself.

He brought flowers to Paulina Price before the celebration. She did not need to be coaxed. He told her he still loves her. And then Paulina took the stage and spoke about the history of Juneteenth while Abe and Lexie watched from the crowd. The emotional architecture of that scene, a man who almost stayed home watching Paulina Price remind a community why this day exists, is the kind of storytelling that makes Days of Our Lives different. She did not need a script for that moment. She needed an audience. Abe almost did not give her one.

Juneteenth does not get the recognition it deserves in American culture broadly. In daytime television, only one show has made it a consistent part of its storytelling fabric. Salem shows up for this holiday every year. Today, Paulina Price gave Salem exactly that reminder. And Salem needed it.

Has Days of Our Lives changed how you think about Juneteenth? Sound off below and tell us what this storyline means to you!