“Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.”
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Memorial Day is the fifth of 12 federal holidays. The holiday’s origins can be traced to the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members — both Union and Confederate — between 1861 and 1865.
Memorial Day was also known as Decoration Day. It was a day to decorate graves of those who died for the Union in the Civil War. It later encompassed the fallen in all our wars. The holiday honors those who died as a result of battle while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Memorial Day has become the start of summer.
The History
The holiday was made a federal holiday observed on the last Monday in May by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968.
The first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day occurred on May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers, which were in bloom.
The practice was already widespread. Waterloo, New York, began a formal observance on May 5, 1866, and was later proclaimed to be the holiday’s birthplace.
Yet Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864, according to the Library of Congress. And women in some Confederate states were decorating graves before the war’s end.
The opening of the order that created the holiday established it “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
The holiday honors those who died as a result of battle while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. It has also served a part of the country’s “civil religion,” according to scholar Robert N. Bellah.
“The Memorial Day observance, especially in the towns and smaller cities of America, is a major event for the whole community involving a rededication to the martyred dead, to the spirit of sacrifice, and to the American vision,” Bella wrote in his 1967 article “Civil Religion in America.”
This is why we STAND for the National Anthem and not kneel. Don’t forget that this Memorial Day pic.twitter.com/kQCPCx7aEo
— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) May 26, 2025
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My Army Sergeant dad served in Europe in WWII and participated in the Normandy invasion, the Battle of the Bulge and other engagements. My wife’s father served as a B-17 Bombadier in the 8th Air Force, flying 30 missions over Germany and occupied Europe. Two of my dad’s older brothers served on the Western Front in WWI. I joined the US Army in November of 1971 but was sent home due to a heart murmur. May God Bless all who have served our country.
That’s very impressive. We owe them a lot, more than we can repay.
Very true.