Today as we celebrate with picnics, going to the beach or the pool, and spending time with family and friends, let’s take a moment to remember why we are actually celebrating and why it is a national holiday. Memorial Day is the official day that we honor all who have served in the armed forces and given us their ultimate sacrifice. These men and women have died for us in order that we remain free to celebrate life with each other.  So, as we cook on the barbeque and enjoy our gatherings, Life University wishes to extend a heartfelt thank you and honor all of our Life U family members who have lost a loved one. We also wish to honor the men and women that have served and are still serving our country today.

According to History.com, here are some little-known facts about Memorial Day’s history and evolution.

  1. Possible Ancient Roots
  • The Ancient Romans and Greeks held annual remembrance days for lost loved ones, including soldiers, with public festivals and laying flowers on their graves.
  • Athens, Greece would hold public funerals for fallen soldiers after each battle. The remains of the dead soldiers were presented for the public to honor them.
  • “One of the first known public tributes to war dead was in 431 B.C., when the Athenian general and statesman Periclesdelivered a funeral oration praising the sacrifice and valor of those killed in the Peloponnesian War—a speech that some have compared in tone to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.”
  1. Earliest Known American Celebration of Memorial Day
  • It is believed that the first known celebration was held after the Civil War by recently freed slaves. These recently freed African Americans made their way to several camps in South Carolina where Union Soldiers captured during the war were held. They found many had died from the horrific conditions of these camps and were buried in mass graves.
  • “On May 1, 1865, more than 1,000 people recently freed from enslavement, accompanied by regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops (including the Massachusetts 54th Infantry) and a handful of white Charlestonians, gathered in the camp to consecrate a new, proper burial site for the Union dead. The group sang hymns, gave readings and distributed flowers around the cemetery, which they dedicated to the ‘Martyrs of the Race Course’.”
  1. The Founder of the Holiday Celebrated a Long and Distinguished Career.
  • “In May 1868, General John A. Logan, the commander-in-chief of the Union veterans’ group known as the Grand Army of the Republic, issued a decree that May 30 should become a nationwide day of commemoration for the more than 620,000 soldiers killed in the recently ended Civil War. On Decoration Day, as Logan dubbed it, Americans should lay flowers and decorate the graves of the war dead ‘whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land’.”
  • He was a congressman until he resigned to rejoin the army to fight in the Civil War. After the war, Logan return to politics and served in both the house and senate.
  1. General John A. Logan Got the Idea of a Memorial Day from Southern Events
  • During the war, southern women would informally get together to honor the fallen soldiers.
  • “April 1886, the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus, Georgia resolved to commemorate the fallen once a year—a decision that seems to have influenced John Logan to follow suit, according to his own wife.”
  1. It Wasn’t Until 1971 that Memorial Day Became a Holiday.
  • By 1890, every state had adopted this holiday, but it was not until 1971, during the Vietnam war, that the Federal Government legally adopted this as an official national holiday.
  1. Memorial Day was Officially Known as Decoration Day Before it was Legally Changed to Memorial Day
  • Even though it has been referred to as Memorial Day since the 1880s, the official name was Decoration Day for over a century.
  • The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 changed the observance from May 30 to the last Monday in May. This was done in order to give federal workers a three-day weekend.
  • This move created controversy, especially for veterans who were concerned that people would associate this holiday as the start of summer instead of honoring soldiers who died in service to their country.
  1. Many Towns Claim to be the Birthplace of Memorial Day, but There is Only One.
  • In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation passed by Congress that Waterloo, New York was the official birthplace of Memorial Day.
  1. A WWI Poem Inspired People to Wear a Red Poppy on Memorial Day.
  • Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, who served as a brigade surgeon for an Allied artillery unit, was inspired to write the poem “In Flanders Field” after the Second Battle of Ypres. Seeing the fields of red flowers against the backdrop of the war, McCrae gave “voice to the soldiers who had been killed in battle and lay buried beneath the poppy-covered grounds.”
  • “Later that year, a Georgia teacher and volunteer war worker named Moina Michael read the poem in Ladies’ Home Journal and wrote her own poem, ‘We Shall Keep the Faith,’ to begin a campaign to make the poppy a symbol of tribute to all who died in war. The poppy remains a symbol of remembrance to this day.”
  1. The Evolution of Memorial Day.
  • “Despite the increasing celebration of the holiday as a summer rite of passage, there are some formal rituals still on the books: The American flagshould be hung at half-staff until Noon on Memorial Day, then raised to the top of the staff. And since 2000, when the U.S. Congress passed legislation, all Americans are encouraged to pause for a National Moment of Remembrance at 3:00 p.m. local time. The federal government has also used the holiday to honor non-veterans—the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day 1922.”