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Although Memorial Day is now associated with travel, barbecues, and sales, it originally had a more reverent purpose.
From AP News. Memorial Day is supposed to be about mourning the nation’s fallen service members, but it’s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of discounts on anything from mattresses to lawn mowers.
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WHAT IS THE OFFICIAL PURPOSE OF MEMORIAL DAY?
It’s a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U.S. military, according to the Congressional Research Service. The holiday is observed in part by the National Moment of Remembrance, which encourages all Americans to pause at 3 p.m. for a moment of silence.
WHAT ARE THE HOLIDAY’S ORIGINS?
The holiday stems from the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members — both Union and Confederate — between 1861 and 1865.
There’s little controversy over the first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day. It occurred May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers, which were in bloom. …
HOW HAS MEMORIAL DAY CHANGED?
Dennis said Memorial Day’s potency diminished somewhat with the addition of Armistice Day, which marked World War I’s end on Nov. 11, 1918. Armistice Day became a national holiday by 1938 and was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.
An act of Congress changed Memorial Day from every May 30th to the last Monday in May in 1971. Veterans objected: “They didn’t want to be just some random Monday that people could forget about,” Dennis said.
In 1972, Time Magazine said the holiday had become “a three-day nationwide hootenanny that seems to have lost much of its original purpose.” …
Meanwhile, Jason Redman, 48, a retired Navy SEAL who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he’ll be thinking of friends he’s lost. Thirty names are tattooed on his arm “for every guy that I personally knew that died.”
He wants Americans to remember the fallen — but also to enjoy themselves, knowing lives were sacrificed to forge the holiday.
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(Excerpt from AP News. Photo Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)