Memorial Day was previously called Decoration Day. This name is seldom used now. It is a federal holiday in The United States for honoring and mourning the military personnel who have died in the performance of their military duties while serving in the United States Armed Forces. The holiday is observed on the last Monday of May. Previously the holiday was observed on May 30 from 1868 to 1970.
Many people visit cemeteries and memorials on Memorial Day
to honor and mourn those who died while serving in the U.S. Military. Many
volunteers place an American flag on graves of military personnel in national
cemeteries. Memorial Day is also considered the unofficial start of summer in
the United States.
The Veteran of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Sons of Union
Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) advocated returning to the original
date.
Changing the date merely to create
three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this
has contributed a lot to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial
Day.
In 2000, Congress passed the National Moment of Remembrance Act,
asking people to stop and remember at 3:00 pm.
On Memorial Day, the flag of the United States is
raised briskly to the top of the staff and then solemnly lowered to the
half-staff position, where it remains only until noon. It is then
raised to full-staff for the remainder of the day.
The National Memorial Day Concert takes
place on the west lawn of the United States Capital. The concert is broadcast
on PBS and NPR. Music is performed, and respect is paid to the people who gave
their lives for their country.
Across the United States, the central event is attending
one of the thousands of parades held on Memorial Day in large and small cities.
Most of these feature marching bands and an overall military theme with the
Active Duty, Reserve, National Guard, and Veteran service members participating
along with military vehicles from various wars.
Scholars, following the lead of sociologist Robert Bellah,
often make the argument that the United States has a secular “civil religion” –
one with no association with any religious denomination or viewpoint – that has
incorporated Memorial Day as a sacred event. With the Civil War, a new theme of
death, sacrifice, and rebirth enters the civil religion. Memorial Day gave
ritual expression to these themes, integrating the local community into a sense
of nationalism. The American civil religion, in contrast to that of France, was
never anticlerical or militantly secular; in contrast to Britain, it was not
tied to a specific denomination, such as the Church of England. The Americans
borrowed from different religious traditions so that the average American saw
no conflict between the two, and deep levels of personal motivation were
aligned with attaining national goals.
In 1915, following the Second Battle
of Ypres, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a physician with the Canadian
Expeditionary Force, wrote the poem, "In Flanders Fields". Its
opening lines refer to the fields of poppies that grew among the soldiers'
graves in Flanders.
In 1918, inspired by the poem, YWCA worker Moina
Michael attended a YWCA Overseas War Secretaries' conference wearing a
silk poppy pinned to her coat and distributed over two dozen more to others
present. In 1920, the National American Legion adopted it as its official
symbol of remembrance.
Happy
Memorial Day!
No comments:
Post a Comment