Memorial Day is an American holiday held on the final Monday of May to honour those who died while serving in the United States military. Monday, May 30, 2022, will be Memorial Day.
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It began as Decoration Day in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971. Many Americans mark Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, uniting with relatives, and marching in parades. Unofficially, it heralds the start of the summer season.
The Civil War, which ended in the spring of 1865, took more lives than any other conflict in American history and required the building of the country’s first national cemeteries.
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By the late 1860s, Americans in many towns and cities were paying springtime tribute to these countless fallen warriors, adorning their graves with flowers and chanting prayers.
According to some records, one of the first Memorial Day commemorations was held less than a month after the Confederacy fell in 1865 by a group of formerly enslaved persons in Charleston, South Carolina. Nonetheless, the federal government designated Waterloo, New York, as the official birthplace of Memorial Day in 1966.
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