“Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”
— Elie Wiesel
The following essay first appeared at Food & Dining Magazine in 2021.
Today I propose to play against type, leave the food and drink until later, and consider the institution of Memorial Day in America.
After all, such a tradition must begin somewhere, and quite possibly, this one may date directly to May in 1865, when “free blacks in Charleston (SC) reburied dead Union prisoners of war and held a cemetery dedication ceremony.” A more formal starting point came shortly thereafter.
May 30, 1868: Civil War dead honored on Decoration Day (History)
By proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, the first major Memorial Day observance is held to honor those who died “in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Known to some as “Decoration Day,” mourners honored the Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers. On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery. The 1868 celebration was inspired by local observances that had taken place in various locations in the three years since the end of the Civil War.
(In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May.)
It so happened that the father of modernist composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) served in the Union Army as a bandmaster.
Decoration Day According to Charles Ives (Prufrock’s Dilemma)
Charles Ives wrote of his piece Decoration Day, the second of the four pieces included in his A Symphony: New England Holidays, that it “started as a brass band overture, but never got very far that way.”
Ives’ musical and written remembrances conjure a time long past.
Ives’ postface to Decoration Day reads:
In the early morning the gardens and woods around the village are the meeting places of those who, with tender memories and devoted hands, gather the flowers for the Day’s Memorial. During the forenoon as the people join each other on the Green there is felt, at times, a fervency and intensity–a shadow perhaps of the fanatical harshness–reflecting old Abolitionist days. It is a day as Thoreau...Read more
