For many, many years, we have been celebrating Memorial Day on the last Monday of May. This holiday honors the men and women who have died while serving our country. Unofficially, Memorial Day also marks the beginning of the summer season. We normally spend the day celebrating the lost lives with parades, specials, and a national moment of remembrance at 3:00 p.m. local time.
It is unclear exactly how this tradition started, many different individual groups and communities had independently had memorial gatherings, so the country made it a full holiday, giving people the time to show remembrance.
Originally, most of the lives being remembered on this day were taken during the Civil War, which claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history, and required the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries. After World War I, people started wearing a red poppy in remembrance of those fallen in war, a tradition that began because of a poem addressing World War I.
The reason this day was chosen is because in 1868, May 30th was known as Decoration Day. This day was designated to decorating graves of those who died in defense of their country with flowers. This was an important day to remember those who have fallen because it was not the anniversary of any particular battle. This would help make sure that the day would be spent remembering everyone who had lost their lives, not just those who died on that day years prior. On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery to the 5,000 people who participated in decorating the graves of the 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there.
Though Memorial Day was originally to honor those lost while fighting the Civil War, many more major conflicts came about, leaving many more people dead from fighting other wars, like World War II, The Vietnam War, The Korean War and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The tradition of Memorial Day has been celebrated for many years, but was just made a federal holiday in 1971. The date was also changed from May 30th to the last Monday in May because of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. This act was passed to create a three-day weekend for federal employees.
