05/25/2026
Have you heard of Decoration Day?
I’ll be honest, Memorial Day has never felt celebratory to me, and I’ll explain why.
Even as a child, I can remember feeling a disconnect that surrounded the cookouts, sales, and the shared “Happy Memorial Day.” I always thought gathering with loved ones was important, but to be honest something about the day itself always felt like it deserved something different.
Fast forward to present day……I found myself returning to its older name: Decoration Day.
Before it became Memorial Day, Decoration Day was exactly that: A day of decorating graves with flowers, tending burial grounds, and honoring the dead through acts of care and remembrance.
I’d like to share some history with you…..One of the earliest recorded Decoration Day observances took place in 1865 in Charleston, where formerly enslaved Black Americans gathered to honor Union soldiers who had died. Many of those soldiers had been buried hastily in a mass grave. Local Black residents exhumed the bodies, reburied them individually so they could be laid to rest with dignity, built a fence around the cemetery, and decorated the graves with flowers. Thousands gathered in procession bringing blooms, singing hymns, and honoring the dead through remembrance and care.
Because at its root, Decoration Day wasn’t about celebration. It was about tending to the dead. Honoring sacrifice. Making sure people were remembered properly. Returning dignity where dignity had been denied. Families would bring flowers cut from their gardens. Hands would brush dirt from stone. Names would be spoken aloud. Stories would be retold at gravesides. The decorating itself became ritual and for many families, especially throughout Appalachia and the South, that tradition still continues.
Learning more about Decoration Day helped me understand a feeling I’ve carried for a long time, that this day has always felt less like celebration and more like remembrance.
A day to pause, to honor and to remember those who came before us.
I’d like to add that none of this is meant to take away from those who have served, are currently serving, or the families who carry that sacrifice every day.
If anything, it deepens my respect for what this day asks of us: and that is remembrance.
We remember those who never made it home. We remember and hold close to those who returned carrying what war left behind. For those serving now. And for the loved ones who stand beside them through it all.
This reflection simply comes from wanting to honor the roots of the day and the many layers of memory, grief, service, and sacrifice it holds.
Image: historic postcard of soldiers’ graves at Greenlawn Cemetery in Nelsonville, Ohio.
