memorial day 2020: History, Importance of celebration

Memorial Day is a United State of America’S federal holiday, honouring those men and women who have died in military defence service while serving to their nation. It is observed annually on the last Monday of May. this year memorial day 2020 is observed on the 25th of May on Monday.

the memorial day is also known as Decoration Day, it started in the years following the Sunday and converted an official federal holiday in 1971. Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting graveyards or memorials, carrying family gatherings and participating in parades. Unofficially, it is the sign of the beginning of the summer season.

The holiday is military-themed also associated with the Indianapolis 500 car race which is held on Sunday preceding Memorial Day.

Initial Observations of Memorial Day

After the Civil war ended in spring of 1865. The USA claimed more live casualty ever in American war history. so at the late 1860s, Americans in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.

It is not clear where exactly this tradition originated; numerous different communities may have independently initiated the memorial gatherings. And some records show that one of the earliest Memorial Day commemoration was celebrated by a group of freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. 

           Nevertheless, in 1966 the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day.

waterloo

Waterloo—which was first celebrated in the day on May 5, 1866—was chosen because it treated an annual, community-wide event, throughout which businesses closed and residents decorated the tombs of soldiers with flowers and national flags.

memorial day 2020: decoration day

On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan, leader of an association for Northern Civil War veterans, called for a memorial day of remembrance later that month. 

“The 30th of May, 1868, is named for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the tombs of comrades who died in defence of their country during the late revolution, and whose death bodies now lie in almost every city, village and churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed.

On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 cooperators decorated the tombs of the 20,000 Union and Federal soldiers buried there.

Several Northern states held similar memorial events and reprised the tradition in following years; at the end of 1890, each one had made Decoration Day an official state holiday. Southern states, on the other hand, continued to honour their dead on different days until after World War I.

History of Memorial Day

Memorial Day, ancient Decoration Day steadily came to be known, originally honoured only those who lost while battling in the Civil War. But while World War I the United States of America found itself disordered in a different major dispute, and the holiday emerged to memorialise American military personnel who died in all wars, including the Vietnam War, The Korean War and in World War II.

thereafter, Memorial Day continued to be celebrated on May 30, the date Logan had selected for the initial Decoration Day. But in 1968 Congress set the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in order to build a three-day weekend for federal employees; the change occurred in 1971 and The same law also declared Memorial Day as a federal holiday.

further more story of the memorial day is here.

See also Veterans Day and Armed Forces Day.