Happy Memorial Day Weekend for the Throngs of Members Residing in the US!

[Vyn]

For the multitudes residing in other countries who may not be versed on the intricacies of national U.S. holidays, this is traditionally the start of summer here, on Monday everything is closed, and you're supposed to go visit cemeteries, and so forth, remembering those who have come and gone from our lives.

It was originally for remembrance of those who died fighting in wars. Even when I was growing up, that was the point. But over the past few decades it has taken on a broader meaning. For a lot of folks, it is an excuse to go to the lake, get plastered for three days, and then come home with a sun burn and a hang over. For even more people, though, it is still observed as the solemn event it was meant to be. I've done both.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

We in the UK tend to do remembering of our fallen military around the 11th November and have done since the end of WWI. I'm curious as to what the reason was for using the last Monday on May in the US?

We do have a public holiday on Monday, nominally the Monarch's Birthday, but it never actually coincides with their birthday!

Also my understanding is that in the US (correct me if I'm wrong) that nothing seems to close on religious holidays, so shops and cinemas and such like will all be open on Christmas Day, but they will all be closed in the UK.

[Vyn]

Memorial Day used to be May 30th. It was a conglomeration of several different "remembrance days" that had been observed, all stemming from the Civil War. At some point they decided having a three day weekend was a big deal and changed to the last Monday of May. There are still arguments surrounding that decision.

You're right about religious holidays here, for the most part. Smaller towns tend to close everything up, the bigger the town though, the more likely everything will be open. Although there are usually shortened hours. It also has to do with regional attitudes towards such things. For people who label the US as a democracy or a republic or whatever, we are a capitalist society through and through and if there is money to be made, things tend to favor that. It has been within my memory that it used to be different and if you were out on Christmas you could pretty much not find anything open regardless of where you were. Not so anymore.

[Vyn]

Additionally, whether something is open or not on a religious holiday is also impacted by the feelings of those running a given business. Where I am employed, the owners are very religious. Christians. Southern Baptists, to be precise. We close for any Christian holiday, whether it is nationally recognized as a holiday or not. So there are a couple every year that we get off that no one else does - newer people are always surprised by that.

We're privately owned though, so no shareholders to appease except the owners.

[Zzzptm]

^Privately-held firms, in my experience, are the best places I've ever worked.

My employer is a veteran, so we make it a point to observe Memorial Day and Veterans' Day with a measure of reverence, which I feel is appropriate. Whenever I visit a veterans' cemetery, I always come to tears as I think of the lives ended in battle. Not just the deaths, but the injured of body and mind that find they no longer live as they once did. War makes terrible, awful changes upon us.

I recommend Michael Palin's "Great-Uncle Harry" as a fit memoir for the memory of the dead. It takes a name from a plinth that means something very much to the author but who may as well be an unknown to me and then adds the details of the life before the battle that ended his days.

"Lest we forget, lest we forget." - Rudyard Kipling, Recessional