Memorial Day

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Memorial Day is a US holiday to remember those that died while serving in the US military, particularly those that died in combat. Memorial Day is observed on the 3rd Monday in May, but was held on the 30 May for decades before that. Currently, it is also seen as the unofficial start of summer in the US.

History

What we know know as Memorial Day, was started as Decoration Day shortly after the end of the Civil War in 1865. Many US cities and towns began holding tributes to the men (and a few women I believe), who died in the war. They also decorated the graves with flowers, and the religious usually said prayers, also.

 Decoration Day

On 5 May 1868, Gen. John Logan, requested a national day remembrance on 30 May 1868. Why the 30th of May? Because it isn't the anniversary of any particular Civil War battle. The Decoration Day he sought was a day

"designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land"

 Gen. Logan got his request and the 30th of May 1868 was the first national "memorial" day. (It was still referred to as Decoration Day.) On that Decoration Day, 5,000 people gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to decorate the graves of the 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers killed during the war buried there.

After that first day of remembrance, many northern states held commemorative events similar to the 1868 event at Arlington. By 1890, each of the northern states (at that time) had made Decoration Day an official state holiday. The southern states remembered their dead in other ways until after WWI.

In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. This act established 4 national holidays to be always observed on a Monday in order to provide a 3 day weekend for Federal Employees. Memorial Day is one of those 4 holidays, the other 3 being Washington's Birthday (aka President's Day), Columbus Day, and Veterans Day. The bill went into effect 1 Jan 1971, making 31 May 1971 the first Memorial Day to be observed as a national holiday. (It was designated as the last Monday in May at that point.)

Sources

• History.com's page on Memorial Day
• 1971 calendar

• Pres. Lyndon Johnson on the Uniform Monday Holiday Act
• usmemorialday.org - includes the story about the red poppies
• Fast Facts - including casualty numbers

Shavuot

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In Hebrew, Shavuot means "weeks" (referring to the 7 weeks between Passover and Shavuot.) Jews believe that Shavuot is when God handed down the Torah on Mount Sinai. It's also one of the harvest festivals in Judaism, specifically the festival of the harvest of wheat.

Story of Shavuot

The story of Shavuot starts with the story of Passover, you can find a brief version of the Passover story on my previous post on Passover. So, picking up from there.

Pharaoh lets the Israelites leave Egypt, and they start the 40 year journey to the Promised Land.  Weeks later, the Israelites make camp at the base a mountain in the Sinai desert known as Mount Sinai. Over the time they are camped out there, Moses goes up the mountain several times to talk to God, and God gives Moses. During Moses' trips up the mountain, God gives him the 10 Commandments, along with laws concerning the altar, slaves, violence, property, restitution, the sabbatical year, the sabbath, festivities, the Tabernacle, and more. (You can read the full story in Exodus 19:1-34:30 of a Christian Bible.)

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Celebrations

How long you celebrate Shavuot depends on if you're in Israel or not. In Israel, it's a one day holiday, while the rest of the world extends the holiday to two days.

• Prayers for Shavuot are said to thank God for the Torah and God's law, especially at dawn.
• The Synagogue is decorated with flowers and plants to symbolize the flowers on Mount Sinai. Also, Jews go to the synagogue to hear the 10 Commandments be read there.
• People typically stay up all night to study the Torah on the first night.

As for food, it's customary to eat dairy food on Shavuot. Why? To Jews, the Torah is like nourishing milk, along with a few other reasons.

Sources

• BBC page on Shavuot
• Chabad.org's pages on Shavuot 101, why cheese is eaten

Want to learn more?

• Chabad.org has pages on several aspects of Shavuot.
• myjewishlearning.com's shavuot-101 page