When it comes to Memorial Day, there’s one thing Americans can agree on: the commemoration of the day has strayed from its sober roots.
Where did it start? That’s up for debate. The most likely answer is Columbus, Miss., where in 1866 a group of women gathered at the town cemetery. Over 2,000 Confederate soldiers were buried there, along with a few dozen Union dead. The women were moved to express honor to both. But another Columbus — this one in Georgia — claimed to have gotten there first. As did Waterloo, N.Y., which bills itself as “the birthplace of Memorial Day.”
Who gets credit for it? Not those who got there first, but Gen. John A. Logan, a Union veteran who decreed May 30 a national day to remember the Civil War fallen in 1868. Memorial Day wasn’t even its original name: States adopted “Decoration Day,” which was for many years focused on the Civil War dead. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 moved Memorial Day to the last Monday in May, rather than May 30.
Distress over the gaiety of the day is common. “Only 3% plan to celebrate in a formal way by attending a community parade, gathering, or memorial service. An additional 4% say they plan to visit gravesites,” Gallup found in 2006. In 2015, a Gallup poll showed Memorial Day and the day before it are among the happiest, least-stressful days of the year for Americans.
But even that perception might be off. “The old pathos and solemnity of the act have vanished, too, except in very quiet country places,” the New York Tribune wrote in 1875. As one of the few days off work at the time, the “solemnity” of the day in its first few years turned out to be the exception, not the rule.
