Decoration Day
Picnics and the rituals of remembrance
My grandmother, Josephine, was born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in 1908. She never called the holiday ‘Memorial Day’, even after the day officially became Memorial Day in 1971.
She still called it ‘Decoration Day.’
Decoration Day was first “officially” observed at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30th, 1868, after the end of the Civil War. The graves of 20,000 soldiers were decorated with flowers, flags and wreaths.
But one of the first recorded historic observations of a ‘Decoration Day’ was on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina, the place where the Civil War began, at an event that was…
“…organized by freed slaves to pay tribute and give proper burial to Union troops.”
Historian David William Blight discovered the records of the Charleston memorial and has written extensively about it. You can read more here: Forgetting Why We Remember.
And, at the end of that day of burial and remembrance, there was a picnic near the cemetery site.
The Custom of Cemetery Picnics
Remembering When Americans Picnicked in Cemeteries from Atlas Obscura tells the story of a post-Civil War America reeling from loss, where there was a lack of large recreational outdoor spaces for citizens to gather.
“The tombstone-laden fields were the closest things, then, to modern-day public parks.
Death was a constant visitor for many families, and in cemeteries, people could “talk” and break bread with family and friends, both living and deceased.”
And, at St. Paul’s Chapel, small details:
“…New Yorkers strolled through St. Paul’s Churchyard in Lower Manhattan, bearing baskets filled with fruits, ginger snaps, and beef sandwiches.”
Roast Beef Sandwiches and Ginger Snaps
When I worked in downtown New York, I would often wander over to St. Paul’s and Trinity Church on my lunch hour, so I was especially charmed by the photograph of the women enjoying their lunches at St. Paul’s.
I started craving a roast beef sandwich and ginger snaps (and chips and a Coke.)
So I mixed a generous dollop of Bookbinder’s Horseradish, a famous Philadelphia brand and restaurant opened in 1865, with some Hellman’s Mayonnaise and made my sandwich.
And I got myself a bag of Stauffer’s Ginger Snaps, which have been made since 1871, and would not have looked out of place at picnics of the era.
Both of my grandmothers loved ginger snaps and the cookies were less expensive because they used molasses instead of refined sugar. My maternal grandmother, Mamie, would always make gingersnap gravy for her Sauerbraten.
Now I’m craving that.
This postcard illustration is from 1908, the same year my paternal grandmother Josephine was born. The woman appears to be a war widow, decades after the fighting had ended, still observing Decoration Day.
Wars end, but rituals remain.
Whether you call it Decoration Day or Memorial Day, I hope you have a good one.
Jolene
And my mother made a brisket with a ginger snap gravy, and now you have me craving THAT, Jolene! Wonderful article.
I, too, remember and participated in Decoration Day. I felt honored to get to go with my dad to take care of the family graves, he with a shovel removing the sagebrush and dry grass, rounding up the dirt of two earlier generations of families members -soldiers among them. In the one year when tulips didn't freeze in our mountain Wyoming valley, he took some and put one white and one red on his grandmothers' graves - I wish I remember which went to whom. Our aunts would come from faraway towns to decorate the graves, always taking the lilacs out of the fronts of the bushes, not in unseen spots. My mother wished they wouldn't disfigure the bushes.