We’ve just marked Remembrance Sunday / Armistice again here in the UK - and in general, there always seems to be a good turnout of people who will attend a ceremony of remembrance, pay their solemn respects to those who died in armed conflict to bring about freedom, stand silent, listen to the names on roll and spend a little time thinking about what it means for so many people to have laid down their lives for us.
But I can never help wondering - how long will this tradition continue? - we may say that we will never forget - and we try to instil this in our children, but it seems likely that at some point in the future - even if it is thousands of years hence, it will be discontinued. But will it? and how/when?
I should very explicitly clarify: I do not personally wish it to be discontinued, but I think it somewhat unlikely that humans living in the same place as me in, say, five thousand years, will be gathering to solemnly remember the names of people who died in World Wars 1 and 2.
How is this likely to play out? Do we have any examples from history of such ceremonies, once regarded as important and eternal, that are now discontinued?
WAG: when the next major war or catastrophe occurs and we become more concerned with remembering that (or, as is perhaps more likely given the state of weaponry these days, the survivors are more preoccupied with attempting to rebuild civilisation and/or succumbing to radiation sickness).
Here’s a possible case study, if somebody wants to do a little research:
Fourth of July Parades.
A generation or two ago, every small town in America held a big parade on the the 4th of July.
Many big cites did , too, I believe.
Today, the custom has died down, and almost disappeared. This is partly because the whole concept that a parade was something to get excited about began to fade–(like the circus coming to town—it just isn’t necessary in the age of television and modern life.) But it is also because people just stopped caring about formal celebrations on Independence Day.
I think celebrations might be a slightly different kind of case from ceremonies of remembrance - in the latter, I think there is often more of a sense of obligation (which is the thing I’m curious as to how it gets broken or fades).
Remembrance Day has pretty much evolved from a specifically WW1 commemoration to a ceremony to honor all our war dead, hasn’t it? The traditional trappings are still the poppies and doughboys, but from what I have seen the event is basically for every military casualty since then.
I think that the remembrance days are already getting rolled up into one; the US Memorial Day was originally conceived sometime in the late 19th century to commemorate Civil War dead. Over time, it’s grown to encompass all the wars since then- I’m sure in 1920, it was predominantly about WWI dead, and in 1947, about WWII dead, and in 1980, it was primarily about Vietnam war dead. Today it’s primarily about Gulf War II / Afghanistan dead.
Same thing holds true in other countries; Remembrance Day in 1982 was almost certainly heavily weighted toward the recent Falklands dead.
I bet as long as the nations in question exist, they’ll still commemorate the dead of their last wars on the designated day, and also the dead from previous wars in a more abstract way.
So I imagine in 2113, the United States may be mourning the dead in the war with the S. American Hegemony, but people will still remember in some abstract fashion, the dead in Afghanistan and in the Spanish American War.
I think specific commemorative days like Armistice Day and Pearl Harbor Day will tend to fade into obscurity as the events in question fade from living memory. For example in 2093, September 11th will be a lot like April 15th (the day that the Titanic sunk)- there’ll be a brief notice on the news, and maybe some really, really old people holding some sort of commemoration at the site, but otherwise a historical footnote.
Over a longer time frame, these battles and wars will be historical footnotes at best; they may talk about Market Garden or 73 Easting in some 20th century military history class, and it’ll be along the lines of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest or the Battle of Solicinium- a paragraph or two in a history book.
It was only established in the 90’s, and was never a federal holiday. So I’m not sure it’s dying out so much as it was never really a thing, except for a brief spasm of interest in the early 90’s, around the 50th anniversary of the event.
Stuff is weird though. People still celebrate the foiling of the gunpowder plot 400 years later, despite the fact that it wasn’t really that big a deal historically, and the issues it involved are pretty much over (I don’t think too many British people spend their time worrying about Papists these days).
On the other hand, VE and VJ day are barely acknowledged in the US, despite their being of greater historical importance and within living memory.
I think the ‘lifespan’ of such remembrance ceremonies is tied to the average human lifespan. Unless deliberate efforts are made to recreate ceremonies for a new generations, they tend to die out along with their original participants.
As an example, apparently “Orange Parades” were huge in Toronto up until the 1950s. When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I don’t even remember hearing about them, and only found out about them through my own reading later. With no support from education, and an influx of people who knew nothing about them, is it any wonder they vanished quickly?
On the flipside of that, we have prominent reminders from media and volunteers every Remembrance Day. They put the Ypres memorial on the back of the new twenty-dollar bill. Transit vehicles “stop and stay” at 11 AM on November 11th. We even paused and stood in class this past Monday–and a student reminded us of that.
And as a third example, new ceremonies can be created. All it takes is an event of sufficient emotional intensity. In Toronto, after the death of Jack Layton, people wrote remembrances in chalk all over the square in front of City Hall. Last week on the news, I saw a protest gathered in the square against the mayor, and they were writing protest slogans in chalk. So I’d say that a new tradition, that of a new form of public writing, has been born.
Ceremonies and remembrances live, but only as much as they are manifested by the work of people.
Who cares about the British Empire soldiers who returned from the Boer wars? Or the Crimean?
For that matter, who can accurately count the number of international wars and the countries involved since the Korean War?
Nov. 11 is now a catch-all and already devolving into only a possible day off work.
I recall a Mad Magazine spoof of The Reader’s Digest table of contents “story,” Are We Ignoring Our War of 1812 Veterans?
It brings a laugh not only because it typifies Reader’s Digest dreck but because of the time that’s passed since that war. Hardly anyone cares about the war of 1812, unless it’s Stephen Harper for political hay, and even that’s funny.
The same thing will happen to the wars closer to our own time.
James Loewen has a useful historical divide drawn from African culture, the sasha and the zamani. A passed person is said to be in the sasha as long as someone who knew or remembers them is still alive; when the last such person dies, the subject moves into the zamani.
I think that’s a fairly good model for memorial events. When there is no one left alive who remembers the event, it changes meaning.
This is not my experience here in the UK. The names of the dead from WWI and WWII were read out. I’m not sure that the village where I live lost any soldiers in the Falklands or other conflicts, but even in places where that did happen, the dead of both World Wars are honoured still.