Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: Why Celebrate Memorial Day?

LEST WE FORGET

“In modern times, the Memorial Day holiday merely provides a Monday off from work at the end of May. Now we are almost afraid to confront the hard, intractable facts of sacrifice; “lest we forget” becomes “lest we remember” for the timid and ungrateful. But in more reverent ages, when men and women taught their children to sow long memories of things both near and distant, required them to memorize rich passages of high language both sacred and secular, and pressed them to give thanks for blessings they had not earned, Memorial Day was set apart as a moment of surcease, as a time, quite simply, to pause, to remember the fallen who had made the last sacrifice.” —from the introduction by acclaimed journalist and author Tracy Lee Simmons

“Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other—not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you and I live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth—but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord. . . .”

Thus Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. opens his iconic 1884 Memorial Day Address. This Mount Titano Media Solitaire (a pamphlet)includes the introductory essay and Justice Holmes’ address, excepted from the Mount Titano Media collection of great American speeches, Finding Our Words: Words That Made America, edited by Allison Ellis, with introductions by Tracy Lee Simmons.

MTM’s “Solitaires” series makes notable works and stories from our larger books available in smaller publications as singular features highlighting individual accomplishments in thought, word, and deed.

Mount Titano Media publishes single works & collections of the greatest spoken and written words of all time in the fields of history, literature, poetry, philosophy, and politics for the benefit of families, schools, colleges, universities, and independent lovers of learning and culture.