Yes, the holiday has passed, but now with all the hubub dehubed we can take a look at a few interesting tidbits on the holiday.

In 1868 General John Logan, acting on behalf of the Grand Army of the Republic, established Decoration Day as a day to remember Union soldiers of the Civil War and as a time to decorate their graves with flowers. The day decided upon was May 30.

Interesting enough, Logan actually was actually “borrowing” from a similar tradition started in the South three years earlier to commemorate the graves of Confederate soldiers.

Decoration Day morphed into Memorial Day in 1882, though both names were used until after WWII.

In 1967 a Federal law was passed officially naming the holiday Memorial Day.

They weren’t done however as in 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which moved four holidays from their traditional dates to a specific Monday in order to create a three-day weekend. So once the law took effect at the Federal level in 1971 the tradition May 30th Memorial Day was moved to the last Monday of May.

Since then the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Sons of the Unions of the Civil War have been lobbying to get the date changed back to the May 30th traditional date. In fact from 1987 up to his death in 2012 Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii introduced such legislation every year, never gaining much ground.

Traditional events that occur on or very near Memorial Day weekend include the Indianapolis 500, Coca-Cola 600, as well as numerous and many parades to commemorate the day.

In 2000 Congress passed the National Moment of Remembrance Act which asks people to spend a moment of silence at 3:00PM on Memorial Day to remember the actual reason for Memorial Day. Thank goodness we have the Federal Government to legislate that for us.