What is Memorial Day and how has it evolved from its Civil War origins?

NORFOLK Va AP Memorial Day is a U S holiday that s supposed to be about mourning the nation s fallen operation members but it s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of advance and discounts on anything from mattresses to lawn mowers Iraq War veteran Edmundo Eugenio Martinez Jr announced the day has lost so much meaning that a great number of Americans conflate and mix up Veterans Day Memorial Day Armed Forces Day July Fourth Social media posts pay tribute to everyone who has served when Memorial Day is about those who died For him it s about honoring U S arrangement members he knew who lost their lives I was either there when they died or they were soldiers of mine buddies of mine noted Martinez an Army veteran who lives in Katy Texas west of Houston Selected of them lost the battle after the war Here is a look at the holiday and how it has evolved When is Memorial Day It falls on the last Monday of May This year it s on May Why is Memorial Day celebrated It s a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U S military according to the Congressional Research Utility The holiday is observed in part by the National Moment of Remembrance which encourages all Americans to pause at p m for a moment of silence What are the origins of Memorial Day The holiday s origins can be traced to the American Civil War which killed more than provision members both Union and Confederate between and The first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day occurred on May after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers which were in bloom The practice was already widespread Waterloo New York began a formal observance on May and was later proclaimed to be the holiday s birthplace Yet Boalsburg Pennsylvania traced its first observance to October according to the Library of Congress And women in various Confederate states were decorating graves before the war s end David Blight a Yale history professor points to May when as a multitude of as people a multitude of of them Black held a parade heard speeches and dedicated the graves of Union dead in Charleston South Carolina A total of Union troops had died at a Confederate prison and were buried in a mass grave After the war members of Black churches buried them in individual graves What happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first if that matters Blight communicated The Associated Press in When did Memorial Day become a source of contention As early as The New York Times wrote that the holiday could become sacrilegious and no longer sacred if it focused more on pomp dinners and oratory In an Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery abolitionist Frederick Douglass explained he feared Americans were forgetting the Civil War s impetus enslavement We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation s destroyers Douglass revealed His concerns were well-founded announced Ben Railton a professor of English and American studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts Although roughly Black men served in the Union Army the holiday in countless communities would essentially become white Memorial Day especially after the rise of the Jim Crow South Railton stated the AP in In the s then-President Grover Cleveland was announced to have spent the holiday going fishing and people were appalled Matthew Dennis an emeritus history professor at the University of Oregon previously communicated the AP But when the Indianapolis held its inaugural race on May a overview from the AP made no mention of the holiday or any dispute How has Memorial Day changed Dennis explained Memorial Day s potency diminished somewhat with the addition of Armistice Day which marked World War I s end on Nov Armistice Day became a national holiday by and was renamed Veterans Day in In Congress changed Memorial Day from every May to the last Monday in May Dennis explained the creation of the three-day weekend recognized that Memorial Day had long been transformed into a more generic remembrance of the dead as well as a day of leisure Just a year later Time Magazine wrote that the holiday had become a three-day nationwide hootenanny that seems to have lost much of its original purpose Why is Memorial Day tied to sales and progress Even in the th century grave ceremonies were followed by leisure events such as picnicking and foot races Dennis noted The holiday also evolved alongside baseball and the automobile the five-day work week and summer vacation according to the book A History of Memorial Day Unity Discord and the Pursuit of Happiness In the mid- th century a small number of businesses began to open defiantly on the holiday Once the holiday moved to Monday the traditional barricades against doing business began to crumble authors Richard Harmond and Thomas Curran wrote These days Memorial Day sales and traveling are deeply woven into the nation s muscle memory But Martinez the Iraq War veteran in Texas is posting photos and stories on social media about the organization members he knows who died I m not trying to be a Debbie Downer and tell you not to have your hotdogs and your burgers But give them at least a couple minutes he mentioned Give them several silence Say a little prayer Give them a nod There s a bunch of families out there that don t have loved ones