In memory of Monday

When I was a child holidays were amazing days scattered throughout the year.

Lincoln was born on February 12th.  Washington on the 22nd.  Columbus Day was October 12th.  St. Patrick's Day was March the 17th and there were songs written about that! 

Memorial Day was called Decoration Day and we went out to the cemetery to decorate the graves with baskets of flowers cut from Grandma's garden.

School days preceding a holiday were filled with all sorts of projects based on which one was coming up.  By the time I had the day off I knew why -- often in great detail.  And if I wasn't sure about anything it was a pretty sure thing that I would find out during the day as the adults in my life dropped comments about what it meant to them.

Holidays were a big deal!  Not just a day for partying and drinking, for reveling and having fun, although those things happened too.  There was a sense of awe surrounding anyone, or anything, important enough to have their own day dedicated just to them/it.

 We weren't too sophisticated to play the appropriate music, wave the right flags, drop a tear or two in memory.
 
We began celebrating most holidays on Monday so working people could have a long weekend. (Umm...kind of like Labor Day?)  Then we moved everything back a bit further into the actual weekend in case it rained, which kind of made sense if you were promoting a commercial event that required lots of money to put on and lots of people to make it worthwhile.

Mondays had their hey day and now appear to be recovery days from weekend holidays.  Since weekends were holidays for many people from the get go.  It feels like we lost something here.