I finally got around to figuring out exactly what Memorial Day is all about. (Sue me, I’m a Canadian.)
Oh, I’d heard of it, of course — you can’t watch American prime-time television without getting bombarded with references to Memorial Day — but all we ever hear in the noxious media cloud that drifts northwards across the border is:
- the bumper-to-bumper highway traffic on Memorial Day weekend,
- the statutory holiday on Monday that marks the psychological beginning of summer,
- the traditional opening of lakeside cottages for the season,
- the big family barbecues (when uncle Maury gets one beer too many and starts telling that story again, you know the one!), and
- the big family fights brought on by too much togetherness…
Today, the ever-thoughtful American Sun Singer wished his friends a great weekend “during this time of remembrance” — and that stopped me dead in my tracks.
Remembrance?
So I went and looked it up…
It turns out that Memorial Day is intended to be roughly the same as our own Remembrance Day, (held on “the eleventh day of the eleventh month”) when Canadians wear red poppies in memory of the blood-stained fields of Flanders, and stand in silent prayer at the community Cenotaph (usually in the icy rain) while the cannons sound the “eleventh hour”…
A day of respect and remembrance of those who lost their lives in war, and a day to pray for peace in this world.
Memorial Day used to be a solemn day of mourning, a sacred day of remembrance to honor those who paid the ultimate price for our freedoms. Businesses closed for the day. Towns held parades honoring the fallen, the parade routes often times ending at a local cemetery, where Memorial Day speeches were given and prayers offered up. People took the time that day to clean and decorate with flowers and flags the graves of those the fell in service to their country…Unfortunately, when Congress made Memorial day into a mandatory three-day weekend in with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 - 363), it made it all the easier for us to be distracted from the spirit and meaning of the day.
No wonder there’s a movement afoot to restore the traditional day of observance for Memorial Day, and even a petition that my American friends might wish to sign at www.usmemorialday.org.
Because, yes, no matter what country in this world we call home, it’s a duty and a privilege to honour those people who were (and are) ready to give up their comfort and safety, even to give up their lives, in defense of an honorable ideal.
Truth be told, I’m not entirely sure that I would have had have the courage to do the same…
