Memorial Day Thread :)

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i am flattered that anybody would miss me, and grateful as well i was engaged in offline activities for a few months now that distracted me from this wonderful forum. and i'm very glad you're happy

I stumbled upon this vid only a couple days before Memorial Day, hosted by a young French guy, talking about how the land itself in parts of his country has still yet to recover from the First World War.


https://youtu.be/JqwkVS3VzpA

In the US we have both a Veteran's Day, and a Memorial Day.

Veteran's Day is supposed to be for living veterans, and Memorial Day is to remember the fallen.

Memorial Day came out of the Civil War, Veteran's Day from the First World War.

The Brits also created a "Memorial Day" (but they call it "Remembrance Day"), and did that at the end of WWI, but its on the same day of the Calender (the eleventh day of the eleventh month) as our Veterans Day.

Sure curious how things go ...
Lots of smells of barbeques outside today.Hope everyone had a Lovely Memorial day

Happy belated Memorial Day. I think veterans are Sweet Peas.

I feel like I need to do this!

lovely expressions.... thank you Isabella , Big smiles at you ...

I missed you too Jakki

I'm very glad you both seem to be doing well.

I didn't know that this day was Memorial Day in the USA. Is that a relatively recent thing?

In the UK it used to be Whit Monday, a public holiday with a religious origin. Now it just seems to be a secular 'Bank Holiday' which takes place on the last Monday in May. I'm not even sure what its official title is.

In 1971 they changed the date of Memorial Day from May 30th to whatever the last Monday in May is that year so we can have a three day weekend.

So the Holiday is old (going back to just after the Civil War) but in the last fifty years the date moves around on the calendar each year.

So your late May public holiday has never had any religious association, as in 'Whit Monday'? That's my reading of what you're saying.

Correct. Never was religious. Not in the usual sense. You might have prayed at the cemetery. But it was nothing like the May holiday you're talking about, and it was very similar to Britain's "Remembrance Day". Both were secular and both were responses to the national trauma of vast bloodletting in a particular war. The British Remembrance Day came out of WWI, our Memorial Day (original called "Decoration Day") came out of the Civil War.

And as I said above "Remembrance Day" is the same day on the Calendar that we made into "Veterans Day" at the same time in history at the end of the First World War.

Okay, thanks for clarifying that, NP!

Happy Late Memorial Day.