Book of Days

Daniel Inouye, United States senator from the State of Hawaii, was a World War II veteran and a man who championed the idea of returning our Memorial Day celebration to its original May 30 date. He first introduced the measure to the Senate in 1987; he continued on his quest each year until he died in 2012. Safe to say Senator Inouye had some pretty strong opinions about Memorial Day. He was not alone. Many veterans’ groups like the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) have shared Senator Inouye’s opinion. Their view is one we touched upon in a previous chapter of this blog: three day weekends are great, but there is an unintended effect in that for many of us, the original intent and meaning of the holiday can be easily lost.

So for today, the traditional Memorial Day date, we’ll take a look at the day’s origins. The idea always was to honor soldiers who had died in service to their country, and many communities claim the origin of Memorial Day, which, earlier on, was known as Decoration Day. President Lyndon Johnson issued a proclamation in 1966 naming Waterloo, New York, as the birthplace of the holiday one hundred years earlier, in 1866. But there are many who would disagree, especially folks in Warrenton, Virginia, who claim to have memorialized the graves of Civil War soldiers in 1861, or folks in Savannah or Gettysburg, who claim to have done the same in 1863 and 1864.

The first organized celebration of the day is thought to have been one in Charleston, South Carolina, organized by freed slaves, memorializing Union soldiers buried there in unmarked graves. The event was dubbed an “Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.” That was in 1865. And in 1868, a formal celebration was held at Arlington National Cemetery. The 30th of May was chosen for that celebration by the Grand Army of the Republic; Major General John Logan chose the date because he believed it was a date when flowers would be in bloom all across the country. Perfect, for the focus of Decoration Day was to decorate the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers.

By that year, Decoration Day events were being held across the country on the 30th of May, the commonality being that the day memorialized those who had lost their lives in the greatest conflict in the nation’s history. Eventually, the day came to memorialize the loss of lives from every American war, not just the Civil War.

Of course it doesn’t matter necessarily what day we celebrate Memorial Day; the important thing is we remember the spirit and dignity of the day, whether it be the 30th of May each year or the last Monday of May.

Image: A scene from a Decoration Day penny postcard sent on May 25, 1910, from Ada to her cousin Charles in New Jersey, telling him how she hopes to visit during her summer vacation in July. I hope they had a nice visit!

It’s Memorial Day Weekend, unofficial beginning of summer here in the United States. These unofficial starts vary across nations and cultures. Up across the border in Canada, Victoria Day last week marked this cultural beginning of summer. And of course for those who follow the old traditions, we are well into summer by now, for the gentle season began with May Day at the start of the month. But here in the States, it is Memorial Day Weekend, the three day weekend, that really launches us into summer. Seasonal beach towns are changed overnight into bustling centers of activity. It’s a weekend for baseball games and boating and the firing-up of grills across this great land. Our focus shifts, rather dramatically, outward.

Memorial Day itself has an interesting history, and since the Book of Days is a blog that explores seasonal traditions, it’s one that we’ll delve into on the 30th of May, its traditional date. The problem with Memorial Day is that Congress, in its wisdom, created a three-day weekend out of the holiday back in 1968 when it passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. It sounds very bureaucratic and uninspired and the idea was that we would now celebrate certain national holidays as long weekends, as a matter of convenience. And it certainly is convenient, but it also has the unintended effect of watering down the importance of the actual holidays that are being celebrated. The result is that Memorial Day becomes a day––or a weekend––dominated by burgers and beer and traffic and commerce as we rush off to cookouts, beach homes, and appliance sales… all of which are as far removed from the day’s original intent as can be.

Memorial Day itself began as Decoration Day––a day to decorate the graves of those who had died in service to their country. As with most holidays of this nature, there is some ambiguity and uncertainty as to its true origins, with many communities claiming to originate Decoration Day practices, but all of these stories begin with the American Civil War. By the late 1860s, communities in both the South and the North began the practice of honoring those who had died in battle in the war with a Decoration Day holiday in early summer, and eventually the practice expanded to include those who had died in all American wars, rather than solely the Civil War.

Being the traditionalist that I am, I’m saving that discussion for Memorial Day’s proper date, May 30. My personal view is that it’s fine to celebrate the start of summer this weekend. Holidays do evolve and change and there’s no sense pretending this weekend is not a national welcoming of summer. So go on, enjoy the hot dogs, the burgers, the cole slaw, the s’mores. Even this is tradition, so embrace it, have a wonderful time. I think the 30th, though, is a fine time to remember the solemn beginnings of this national holiday. Congress may have given us a long weekend, but it’s up to each of us to do the memorializing.

The image above is one of my favorites: It’s the Cutrone family on a summer beach outing, probably at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, where Grandma had a bungalow. The little boy in the shorts with the sun in his eyes is my dad, and those are all my aunts and uncles before they were aunts and uncles, and my grandparents, circa 1930s.