Celebrate Memorial Day

Celebrate Memorial Day

We seldom hear of the roots of Memorial Day, focusing on the start of summer. We remember those who have fallen also on Veteran’s Day, and of course we celebrate the birth of our nation on Independence Day. One remembrance from each century ... the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War I. Each day has a different theme. Independence Day focuses on the fundamental values of our forefathers that led them to rebel against Great Britain, immortalized in the Declaration of Independence. Veterans’ Day honors the sacrifices of those who died fighting for our nation, in World War I initially and now more generally all wars. 

It is surprising that the origins of Memorial Day are not more frequently discussed. It began as Decoration Day; there are many localities that claim they were the first to decorate the graves of fallen Union soldiers. The earliest is claimed by some to have occurred in 1865, when former slaves in Charleston, South Carolina did so. This was to express gratitude for their freedom having been gained as a result of the Civil War. The War between the states was fought to preserve the Union, but the Emancipation Proclamation was integral to that war. The war remedied the moral defect embedded in the constitution and subsequent law that had recognized chattel slavery. Abolitionists may have incited the war, but the American people as a whole carried it to completion, at the cost of hundreds of thousands killed, many more wounded.

As we celebrate our values of freedom, I fear we too often confuse it with license; even Christians are sometimes tempted to conflate liberty growing from grace with anomie (lawlessness). Likely few slaves saw their emancipation as enabling them to not have to work, or obey the laws of the land. It meant they were free to become what God had created them to be, without tyrannical human control. It meant that (at least in theory) their lives had equal value to everyone else’s. Subsequent generations have demonstrated that value, not only in the eyes of God, but also to our society. 

We should also, somewhere in our remembrance, honor the price that Jesus paid to free us from the bondage of  sin. We think about this on Good Friday and Easter in a judicial sense. But Jesus unleashed through His work  the very power of God within us, through the Holy Spirit (manifested first on Pentecost) to overcome sin in a practical sense. As we celebrate Memorial Day, let is seek to honor Christ by receiving His empowerment to become all that God calls us to.