Just as Americans do not necessarily have the best understanding of the causes and effects of the Civil War, the origin and purpose of Memorial Day has grown quite foggy over the years as well.
One local law enforcement official thinks people are more likely to associate Memorial Day with sales rather than with fallen soldiers.
Adams County Chief Deputy Sheriff Len Supenski said Memorial Day has changed from a day of veneration growing out of Decoration Day to wholesale commercialization in the Memorial Day of today.
And he is not alone in his analysis. The beginnings of Memorial Day are clouded in rhetoric of reconciliation, race and regret according to more than one historian.
Different economies. Issues of property rights. Finances. From the point of view of a landowner with substantial property, the central issue was of economics,
John Heiser historian at the Gettysburg National Military Park explained, adding that "there's always a cost to having slavery."
Using the terms "states' rights" is a "hollow" apology in defense of the Southern position on the Civil War, Heiser explained.
The emotional nature of slavery and emancipation has pushed these issues to a marginal place in America's Civil War memory and changed the way we view Memorial Day too, which began as a time for honoring the fallen, founded in the aftermath of the war in the time of reconciliation.
There are at least three disputed points of origin for Memorial Day - scholars claim it began in Columbus, Ga. in 1862; perhaps in Boalsburg, Pa. in 1864 or '65 when ladies from the community decorated the graves of fallen Union soldiers, Heiser said.
As scholar David Blight has chronicled in his study of the war, "Race and Reunion: the Civil War in American Memory," Decoration Day began as an 1865 May Day ceremony organized by free blacks and their abolitionist allies, according to Blight.
An estimated 10,000 people, mostly former slaves, formed a procession. They marched to a special cemetery constructed, by 28 black men from a local church, to give an honored burial to 257 Union soldiers who had been buried there without coffins, in unmarked graves.
The procession piled flowers onto the graves and covered the ground with no soil left to sight. The smell of spring flowers wafted through the air that First Decoration Day, the foundation of today's Memorial Day, as described by Blight in his book.And Memorial Day now.
Hot dogs and hamburger on the grill at the lake. Year's first visit to the beach. Heiser said those are the spirit of the modern Memorial Day that has been transformed into a three-day weekend, topped off by that welcome Monday away from school and work.Supenski points to other changes like that of the Memorial Day Sale taking the spotlight from honoring the dead.
Veterans returning from Vietnam, the Baby Boomers, Supenski counts himself among that generation, experienced being spit upon and were called "baby killers," he said. Boomers were on both sides- protesters and war fighters. The shift in that case was toward vilifying soldiers- away from veneration, he said.
"No matter what the policies of a particular war are, we must appreciate the women and men who risked their lives," Heiser said.
Supenski compared the change to the paradigm shift in thinking about police and service personnel after 9/11.As people run away from catastrophe, the police, EMS and firefighters "head toward the chaos," Supenski explained.
So these men and women changed from "brutal and corrupt" to becoming heroes in the public mind, he said.
The next paradigm shift should be toward a re-definition of hero, Supenski said."Those who serve, out of them, look at the numbers lost and the families affected," Supenski said. "They represent one percent of our population. The one percent doing it all for the United States."
At a time when we are engaged in war and reeling from the effects of scarred young veterans in their 20s, a paradigm shift in thinking is more important than ever, he said.
Heiser, a self-described child of the Civil War Centennial, has seen Memorial Day shift, like the shifted focus on states' rights rather than emancipation and economics as causes central to the Civil War, from a solemn occasion to parades like any others.
He read voraciously on the war and especially Classics Illustrated, like "The Red Badge of Courage," so much so he wore out the pages and binding.His high school history books explored slavery and economics as root causes of the Civil War, Heiser said.
Now Americans view the Civil War as a "curiosity" and the reality is that Americans killed each on American soil for causes that were unclear, he said.
Memorial Day. Sales. Monuments. Fallen Soldiers.
Memorial Day is "a time to remember those who lost their lives in service of their country" and to honor our country, food service worker Karen Cole of Carroll Valley said of what she described as a "touching day" and she recalled that both her grandfathers, who died before she was born were veterans.Her industry does not afford a day off during this time, and she said she has always thought of it as time to honor the fallen soldiers anyway.
"There are enough- a good solid core of Americans- who at least take a moment to remember the men and women who are now in our national cemeteries," Heiser said.