The AP’s guide to Memorial Day comes as the holiday sits between its historical origins and its modern reputation. The day is intended to honor service members who died while serving, but many Americans increasingly associate it with the wider rhythm of summer travel, discounts and weekend plans, creating confusion with other observances for veterans and active-duty troops.
Edmundo Eugenio Martinez Jr., an Army veteran from Katy, Texas, said Memorial Day has lost so much meaning that Americans “conflate and mix up Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Armed Forces Day, July Fourth.” He framed his own observance around the specific people he said he knew who died, saying, “I was either there when they died or they were soldiers of mine, buddies of mine,” and describing that “Some of them lost the battle after the war.”
What Memorial Day is and when it falls
Memorial Day falls on the last Monday of May; for 2025, that was reported as May 26. The Congressional Research Service, as described in the AP write-up, ties the holiday to reflection and remembrance for those who died while serving in the U.S. military, and it is observed in part through the National Moment of Remembrance that encourages Americans to pause at 3 p.m. for a moment of silence.
Origins in the Civil War and Decoration Day observances
The holiday’s origins, according to the AP, can be traced to the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members from 1861 to 1865. The AP reported that the first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day took place on May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers that were in bloom.
The AP also described that the practice had already spread in other places: Waterloo, New York, began a formal observance on May 5, 1866, and was later proclaimed the holiday’s birthplace. The AP reported that Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864, and that women in some Confederate states decorated graves before the war’s end.
David Blight, a Yale history professor, said events in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865, were central to the holiday’s early form. The AP reported that the day included as many as 10,000 people—many described as Black—who held a parade, heard speeches and dedicated Union dead graves. It also reported that after the war, members of Black churches buried 267 Union troops who had died in a Confederate prison in individual graves, after initially placing them in a mass grave.
“What happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first, if that matters,” Blight told The Associated Press in 2011.
When the holiday became more contested
The AP said that Memorial Day’s meaning began to be challenged shortly after it grew as a public observance. It pointed to 1869, when The New York Times wrote the holiday could become “sacrilegious” and no longer “sacred” if it focused more on “pomp, dinners and oratory.”
In 1871, the AP reported that Frederick Douglass raised similar concerns in a Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, saying he feared Americans would forget the Civil War’s impetus: enslavement. The AP quoted Douglass as saying: “We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers.”
Ben Railton, a professor at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts, later told the AP that those concerns reflected realities of how the holiday changed. The AP reported that while roughly 180,000 Black men served in the Union Army, the observance in many communities would become “white Memorial Day,” especially after the rise of Jim Crow in the South.
The AP also included other episodes that pointed to shifting public expectations, including a historical account—previously shared with the AP—that then-President Grover Cleveland was said to have spent the holiday going fishing in the 1880s and that “people were appalled.” The AP also noted that when the Indianapolis 500 held its inaugural race on May 30, 1911, an Associated Press report did not mention Memorial Day or controversy.
How Memorial Day changed with later national holidays and a new calendar
Over time, the AP said Memorial Day’s potency diminished in part with the addition of Armistice Day, marking World War I’s end on Nov. 11, 1918. Armistice Day became a national holiday by 1938 and was renamed Veterans Day in 1954, according to the AP.
The AP reported that Congress changed Memorial Day in 1971 from every May 30 to the last Monday in May. Matthew Dennis, an emeritus history professor at the University of Oregon, said the creation of the three-day weekend recognized that Memorial Day had long been transformed into a more generic remembrance of the dead and also a day of leisure.
The AP also cited contemporary criticism of the holiday’s direction, including a remark from Time Magazine published in 1972 that Memorial Day had become “a three-day nationwide hootenanny that seems to have lost much of its original purpose.”
Why the holiday is tied to travel and sales
The AP reported that even in the 19th century, grave ceremonies could be followed by leisure activities such as picnicking and foot races. It said the holiday evolved alongside baseball and the automobile, the five-day work week and summer vacation, citing a 2002 book titled “A History of Memorial Day: Unity, Discord and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The AP added that in the mid-20th century, a small number of businesses began to open on the holiday. Once Memorial Day moved to Monday, the AP said “the traditional barriers against doing business began to crumble,” crediting that characterization to authors Richard Harmond and Thomas Curran. The AP concluded that sales and traveling have become deeply woven into public memory.
Still, Martinez described pushing back against what he said is the drift away from memorializing those who died. He said he posts photos and stories on social media about service members he knows who died, and he urged Americans to set aside even a small amount of time for reflection, saying, “I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer and tell you not to have your hotdogs and your burgers. But give them at least a couple minutes,” adding: “Give them some silence. Say a little prayer. Give them a nod. There’s a bunch of families out there that don’t have loved ones.”