The Reason for the Day
Many of us will be taking a day off from work Monday, thanks to the federal government declaring it as a national holiday. So you might be doing yard work, or planning a cookout, or returning from a long weekend trip.
All of which is fine, but be sure to save some time for why you have the day off. It’s literally because someone gave their life.
There was a common practice in parts of this country each spring, of annually placing flowers at the gravesites of relatives who had recently passed on. I recall my grandmother refer to it as Decoration Day…a throwback to the origins of the custom.
Decoration Day became Memorial Day as a way to honor those who died in service to our country around the time of the Civil War. Memorial Day as a name became more common after World War II, but it wasn’t until 1967 that Congress officially gave it that name.
And from its start in the north in 1868, it was traditionally on May 30th, until the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was passed, giving us three-day-weekends, but in the process, helping us lose sight of why we were taking the day off from work.
The late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, himself a World War II veteran, introduced a bill in 1987 to restore Memorial Day to May 30th, to better focus our attention on the topic. He introduced the resolution each year until his death in 2012, without success.
So in between the grilling or the lawn work, take a moment and think about those families who have an empty chair at the table due to losing a loved one in service to our country. That’s the least we can do to repay that debt.
