What are we memorializing - or who? It’s a holiday weekend here in the US, and many families have gone on a three-day vacation. Monday is Memorial Day, and some would argue that the original meaning of the holiday has been lost. I’m doing nothing other than catching up on a pile of tasks throughout this entire break (lest something else come up), but I haven’t really paid attention to the overly-commercial nature of Memorial Day. Lockergnomie H. Robert Lewis weighs in:

I believe that, indeed, the original meaning of Memorial Day has been lost in the greed of commercialism… and the overwhelming hedonism that has gripped our nation in the last seventy years.

No longer do we honor our dead (vis a vis Memorial Day). We honor only what makes us “feel good” or that which increases our wealth and status.

Our congress has steadily made a mockery of our national traditions in order to create long weekends for Federal workers. We no longer celebrate the birthdays of Washington (2/22) and Lincoln (2/12). They were moved to a Monday in February. Martin Luther King’s Birthday (1/15) was designated to fall on a Monday. I wonder how long it will be until Independence Day and Christmas fall to the power of the legislator’s pen.

Memorial Day now means the first mini-vacation of the summer; the chance for merchants to hawk their goods; another opportunity to be paid for producing nothing. Our National Ethic has changed since I was a boy. That was a time when there was respect and pride for those who had fallen while protcting us. That Ethic is dead in the wake of dirty little “police actions” and rampant new-age colonialism; a war that was implemented by an oil baron to steal oil. How can we respect that?

So, the question remains: is he mostly right, or mostly wrong? I’m certain that Memorial Day doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it once did to my elders - but whose fault is that?