4. Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a national holiday in the United States. It was originally a day set aside to honor the northern Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers. Waterloo, New York, is generally credited with having held the first Memorial Day observance on May 5, 1866. Henry C. Welles, a Waterloo pharmacist, suggested to veterans’ organizations that the graves of the dead be decorated with flowers. Referred to at the time as “Decoration Day”, this early celebration included flying American flags at half-staff, a veterans’ parade, and a march to the village cemetery to hear patriotic speeches.

The first nationwide Decoration Day was held on May 30, 1868, by a group of Union Army veterans known as the Grand Army of the Republic. After World War I, the American Legion took over the task of planning the observance, which became known as Memorial Day and honored American service people from all wars.

Both religious services and patriotic parades mark the modern-day observation of Memorial Day. In the national official observance, a wreath is placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. One of the more moving observances is held in the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania, where schoolchildren scatter flowers over the graves of unknown Civil War soldiers. In 1986, Hands Across America—originally an effort to raise money for the homeless—was held on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. The idea was to have an unbroken chain of people holding hands across the entire continent, but not enough people pledged to participate. They were urged to celebrate America anyway, and the event ended up merging with the observation of Memorial Day.

American Flag

On Memorial Day the flag is displayed at half-mast, a symbol of mourning, from sunrise until noon, and at full staff from noon until sunset. This rule does not apply, however, to the millions of smaller flags that line American streets and sidewalks. There are also very specific rules governing how the flag should be displayed in churches.

Decoration of Graves

The practice of decorating graves with flowers and wreaths on Memorial Day officially dates back to the first observance in Waterloo, New York, in 1866, although the town of Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, has proclaimed itself the “Birthplace of Memorial Day” because it was decorating soldiers’ graves two years earlier. Both of these towns may have gotten the idea from a paragraph in the Troy, New York, Tribune two years after the Civil War ended. It described how the women of Columbus, Mississippi, strewed flowers on the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers, an act that quickly became a symbol of friendship and understanding between the North and the South.

Poppy

Red paper poppies, symbolic of the war dead because real poppies bloomed everywhere in the battlefield graveyards of France, are traditionally sold by veterans on Memorial Day. The Veterans of Foreign Wars conducted the first nation-wide “poppy sale” to raise money for disabled and destitute veterans in 1922. At one time, people referred to Memorial Day as Poppy Day.