When I was a kid, back in the '50s, it was known as Decoration Day, a day to decorate the graves of the war dead. But to us kids, it meant a day to decorate our bikes with flowers and streamers, and participate in the parade they always held in our little suburb. Do they still have a parade where you live?
I am an amateur aficionado of all sorts of Americana. I have lived in different regions and traveled extensively. I have never heard of ‘Decoration Day’ even as a casual reference. In most of the country, Memorial Day doesn’t have many rites or symbolism associated with it except being the unofficial start of summer.
However, there are various groups that use it as a time to clean up cemeteries whether the graves are war related or not. People are also supposed to remember all of those that died in wars. There may be some Memorial Day parades somewhere but I have never seen one in areas ranging from Texas to Louisiana to Massachusetts and the rest of New England. It is mainly just a day to rest, think and go to the beach.
Grandparents did. But they’re gone so no one I know anymore.
I have, once or twice, but I say Memorial Day more often.
I remember hearing “Decoration Day”–long ago.
Just before I turned 6, we (Mom & my sibs) were Up North, where I’d been born, visiting my father’s family. We got baskets from the basement (houses up there had basements!) on Memorial Day and put flowers in them. Then went to visit my father’s grave.
So I know quite well that Memorial Day is more than the beginning of Summer–and White Shoe Season. I remember Armistice Day in November, now called Veterans Day–when the VFW sold poppies. And I don’t mind that vets are now honored on Memorial Day, too. They’re still alive, after all. My father had served in The Last Good War but the Cold War killed him–the first of a string of less popular wars…
We made one more trip Up North a few years later but my father’s family never, ever came to visit us in Texas.
Not American, but familiar with a blues song called “Decoration Day” because it was covered by the Cowboy Junkies, which is how I learned that is what the holiday was called at one point.
I grew up calling it Decoration Day. It wasn’t officially changed to Memorial Day intil I was 28 years old, and I went to college in a state where it was not a public holiday, so I wrote final exams on Decoration Day.
Decoration day was common usage where I grew up. The town I live in now has a parade every year on Memorial Day.
I remember my elders calling it Decoration Day. Including my great-great granduncle, son of a Civil War vet.
So yeah, the term was in common usage in the 1950’s and 1960’s in some parts of the midwest, at least. It’s certainly well-known amongst local history buffs and those up on Civil War lore.
Where I grew up in West Texas, there was no Decoration Day. However, my grandmother’s small town in Arkansas had an annual Decoration Day, but it had nothing to do with Memorial Day. It was held in July, I guess still is, and everyone’s graves were decorated, not just those of vets.
Among my elders, it’s still the day to head to the cemetery to decorate the graves of relatives; my mother-in-law’s sisters will be making the rounds of four or five cemeteries to make sure nobody gets missed, and in the smallish rural cemetery where MIL is buried, probably two-thirds of the graves will have flowers or vases or decorations added by sundown tomorrow.
Among my generation, not so much–none of my grandparents are buried within a thousand miles of here, so the tradition is slipping away.
50 years old, grew up in southern Illinois, where all our grandparents had come up from the hills. It most definitely was Decoration Day, it was observed on May 30, and it was the day to go clean up the cemetery. There was a lot of mowing and weeding and gathering up of old strewn floral arrangements. It actually wasn’t a particularly somber holiday, but this probably isn’t surprising coming from a place where a funeral was viewed as a social occasion.
Anyway, to answer your question, I still persist in calling it Decoration Day, or rather I persist in making a distinction between the two holidays, but then again I’m just kind of difficult like that.
Looking around on the Internet, it seems that maybe my grandmother’s town did hold Decoration Day on Memorial Day after all, but I’m sure I remembered it at the height of summer in July. It’s possible though that we headed to Arkansas one year right after public school let out in West Texas, and I’m conflating this trip with others, which were usually taken later in the summer. School always let out in May where I grew up, never in June.
I grew up during the 1950s in Garfield Hts Ohio, a Cleveland suburb. Decoration Day was one of the annual events we all looked forward to as kids. Our town had a couple general stores which sold everything from candy to soft drinks to school supplies to snacks, etc. During each month of May, we all waited impatiently for these stores to receive their annual Decoration Day supplies which featured rolls of crepe paper about 3" wide and in various bright colors. Usually these items were sold out by a week before Decoration Day. We used the crepe paper to weave it through the spokes of bike wheels and to wrap around bike handle bars. We also purchased baseball or playing cards to fasten next to the bike wheels with clothes pins (remember those?) so that they would hit the spokes and make a loud annoying clap-clap noise while you rode your bike in the parade. Of course, we also purchased small American flags to fasten onto our bikes and wagons. If you owned a bike, you couldn’t wait to get your supply of these items so that you could decorate your bicycle, tricycle, or wagon so that you could participate in the annual Decoration Day parade which traveled down Turney Road with marching bands, soldiers, politicians in convertibles, etc. There was competition to have the best-decorated bike, although I can’t recall that any prizes were ever awarded. This all was so much fun! Would today’s kids get the same thrill celebrating Decoration Day? Of course, even as children, we were all aware that Decoration Day was a day for remembrance of those who died in service to our country. After the parade ended, soldiers graves at local cemeteries were decorated with flowers, wreathes and flags. The day became known as Memorial Day in 1971 when it was made an official holiday.
I remember it being Decoration Day too, growing up in southern California (Los Angeles), 1950’s - 1960’s.
Your memories are exactly the same as mine. I grew up at the same time, just a few miles from you, in Warrensville Hts.