What Is Memorial Day? Meaning and Why It Is Celebrated
Memorial Day is one of America's most important holidays. It was made to honor the heroes of America, particularly those men and women who perished while serving in the United States Armed Forces. The first official celebration of this annual holiday started on May 5, 1866 in Waterloo, New York, when the residents of the town organized an event across their community to honor the dead soldiers by placing flags and flowers on their graves.
While the Waterloo celebration is considered today as the first official Memorial Day celebration, it is also believed that it was in the late 1800s when the tradition was begun by local communities. A couple of years after the Waterloo celebration, General John A. Logan declared a national day of remembrance as he merged together the different celebrations across the country. At the time, Logan was the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic.
When Logan decided to have a national day of remembrance on May 30, 1868, his primary aim was to reunite the residents of the Northern and Southern states who still had not totally recovered from the American Civil War at the time. They celebrated what they called "Decoration Day" by putting small flowers and American flags on the graves of the soldiers buried at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
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It was not until 1890 that Decoration Day was declared an official holiday in all the Northern States. At that time, the Southern States still celebrated the event on different days. In 1968, the U.S. Congress declared that the Decoration Day, which was now known as Memorial Day, be celebrated on the last Monday of May of each year as a federal holiday.
Today, Memorial Day is the time of the year when Americans place wreaths on graves, remember the fighting spirit of American soldiers by watching films or listening to stories of their heroism, and offer a libation to their ancestral heroes.
