Solemn Memorial Day, Not Happy Memorial Day
I send these remarks every year close to Memorial Day
because they are a useful reminder that the Day is not a “happy” one. As well
intentioned as some people are, associating the word “happy” with Memorial Day
is not appropriate .
Memorial Day, the last Monday in May each year, is a
federal holiday established to remember those who died while members of our
country’s armed forces (unlike Veterans’ Day, which celebrates those who
served).
With the Day’s genesis in Decoration Day – when volunteers
laid flowers at graves of the fallen – Memorial Day is not a time for family
barbecues, baseball games, or garage sales.
It’s a Day for all Americans – those who wore our Nation’s
uniform and those who were not so privileged – to memorialize by thought and
deed the heavy, irredeemable price deceased Americans have paid . . . and how
much we owe them for what they lost in every war from the Revolution two-hundred-forty-eight
years ago to our government’s shameful flight from Afghanistan three years ago.
Memorial Day is very different from America’s birthday.
Independence Day (not the “4th of July”) should be celebrated with
fireworks, patriotic songs, and loud band concerts.
But not Memorial Day, a time of remembrance too solemn an
occasion to be “happy.”
Requiescat in pace.
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