Memorial Day’s date was first chosen because it was when flowers would be in full bloom.
Deciding when to observe holidays isn’t always an exact science. George Washington wasn’t born on the third Monday of February, for example. Memorial Day’s precise date on the calendar shifts from year to year (it’s always the final Monday of May, in case you’d forgotten), but at least the reasoning behind it is sound: The late spring date was chosen because it was when flowers would be in full bloom. Because adorning the graves of fallen soldiers with wreaths was once the most important part of the holiday, it’s difficult to imagine Memorial Day taking place at another time of year — especially considering that it was first celebrated in the 1860s, floristry wasn’t quite as commercially developed as it is today.
Certain aspects of the holiday’s origins are murky, but we know that in the wake of the Civil War, many different communities around the country decorated the graves of dead soldiers with blossoms and said prayers. In 1868, General John A. Logan, who led an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, chose May 30 “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.” Originally set aside specifically for the Civil War, Memorial Day came to encompass all military casualties during World War I. Originally celebrated on a state and community-wide basis, it became an official federal holiday in 1971.
Only one of them is recognized as such, however: Waterloo, New York. President Lyndon B. Johnson made it official with a 1966 proclamation that also recognized the centennial of its first observation of Memorial Day, which took place in the town on May 5, 1866. According to Richard Gardiner, co-author of The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday in America, however, no such celebration took place in 1866, and Waterloo's claim to the title is dubious — not that it’s at risk of being taken away. Other towns with their own claims of being the holiday’s birthplace include Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; Carbondale, Illinois; and both Columbus, Mississippi, and Columbus, Georgia, among many others.
