October 7, 2024: Contested Holidays: Memorial/Decoration Day

[Ahead of Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I wanted to dedicate a series to exploring such contested American holidays and what they can help us think about. Leading up to a special post on that most conflicted of all our federal holidays!]

This past May, as I’ve done every year for quite a few now, I shared a special Memorial/Decoration Day post making the case for an additive commemoration of that powerful but fraught occasion—and kicking off a weeklong series of Decoration Day histories as well. I’d ask you to check out at least that holiday post if you would, and then come on back for a couple additional reflections.

Welcome back! As I’ll write in the upcoming Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day post, I’m no longer quite as convinced as I once was that adding to our collective memories is always the right move, at least not when it comes to commemorations. That is, while it’s certainly important that we remember as much of our history as possible, I definitely don’t believe we need to commemorate all of it with things like holidays or statues. Yet while the history of how Memorial Day came to replace Decoration Day is (as that hyperlink post above and the series that followed it hopefully made clear) a frustrating and too often white supremacist one, there’s quite simply nothing about Memorial Day itself that is problematic in the ways that Christopher Columbus was and is. So in this particular case, I remain totally fine with the idea of commemorating both holidays at once, of an additive celebration that emphasizes the inspiring and too-often-overlooked Decoration Day origins but also extends those Memorial Day respectful remembrances to all those who have given their lives in our military conflicts.

But it’s important to add that such Memorial Day remembrances have themselves been too often exclusionary, have focused on white casualties and veterans at the expense of the foundational and consistent diversity of those who have served in our military. The overt exclusion of U.S. Colored Troops veterans from the May 1865 (right near Memorial Day’s usual timing, actually, if years before that holiday had come into existence) Grand Review of the Armies in Washington is just one of so, so many examples of such racist commemorations—and while I know Memorial Day is dedicated to fallen servicepeople rather than living veterans, about 40,000 Black soldiers died during the Civil War, a stunningly high percentage of those who served. So if we’re going to keep Memorial Day as part of our combinatory commemorations of this holiday, we have to make sure that we’re likewise adding into those memorials the full range of those who have given all for the United States.

Next HolidayStudying tomorrow,

Ben