By Ellen Marsden
Memorial Day is the end-of-May holiday that unofficially kicks off summer. But what is the holiday really about?
First, let’s clear up the confusion between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Memorial Day, observed on the last Monday in May, commemorates those who died in military service to the country. Veterans Day, always observed on November 11, honors everyone who has or is serving the country, in wartime or peacetime.
Memorial Day started as a Civil War remembrance
While honoring those who have been killed in combat goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who marked their passing with public remembrances and decorating graves with flowers, our national holiday begins with the Civil War
Toward the end of the war, thousands of Union soldiers were held as prisoners of war in Charleston, South Carolina, at what was formerly a racetrack. Hundreds died from maltreatment, and they were buried in a mass grave there.
In May 1865, newly freed slaves, along with regiments of the U.S. black troops, gathered to honor and properly bury those soldiers. They sang hymns and put flowers on the graves.
Nearly 620,000 soldiers were killed in the Civil War. In May 1868, John A. Logan, Union general and commander-in-chief of the Union veterans group, the Grand Army of the Republic, called for a nationwide day of remembrance to be held yearly on May 30.
General Logan named it Decoration Day, and he called on citizens to put flowers and decorations on the graves of those who had died in the war. (Logan’s name may not be among the most prominent of the Union generals, but Logan Circle in Washington, D.C., is named after him.)
Over time, Memorial Day came to honor all of those lost in military service, not only in the Civil War. In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, and Memorial Day moved from the set observance on May 30, no matter what day of the week that fell on, to the last Monday in May. Memorial Day became a federal holiday in 1971.
Why poppies are a symbol of the holiday
World War I was raging in Europe in 1915 when Canadian soldier and surgeon John McCrae was serving in Belgium. Inspired by the bright red poppies growing in Flanders Fields (located in southern Belgium and northwest France), despite the bleak and brutal battles there, he wrote “In Flanders Fields,” a poem giving voice to the dead soldiers lying beneath the flower-covered ground.
A few years later, Moina Michael — a professor at the University of Georgia and a volunteer at the training headquarters for YWCA overseas workers — who had read McCrae’s poem, was moved to write her own poem commemorating those who had died at Flanders Fields. She, too, referenced poppies in her poem, “We Shall Keep the Faith.”
After the war, realizing there was a need to support disabled veterans, Michael championed the selling of silk poppies to help raise funds. As a result, a movement began to make wearing a red poppy a symbol of remembrance on Memorial Day. Through the years, the symbolism has extended to represent all veterans, so wearing a poppy on Veterans Day has become common as well.
Memorial Day today
For many of us, Memorial Day is a fun day of traditions celebrated with parades, long weekend vacations, barbeques and get-togethers with friends and family. But there are more formal traditions as well. Flags are supposed to be flown at half-staff until noon and then raised.
And by congressional legislation passed in 2000, at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day, Americans are encouraged to think about the meaning of the holiday during the National Moment of Remembrance.
Wishing you a happy and meaningful Memorial Day.
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
⎯John McCrae, May 1915
We Shall Keep the Faith
Oh! You who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet ⎯ to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a luster to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
⎯Moina Michael, November 1918
