Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
If you stuck around town you’d notice the long Memorial Day weekend has brought in a decent number of tourists while locals plan foggy beach BBQs and backyard gatherings. Above all else, Memorial Day honors Americans who have died in service to their country.
A free community gathering will take place at the Santa Barbara Cemetery at 11:00 a.m. on Monday, sponsored by the Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation. Learn more about that here.
The weekend is also known as the unofficial kickoff to summer with gatherings, shopping Memorial Day sales, and traveling for a long weekend trip. This year, it’s estimated that 44% of Americans plan to barbeque while 16% are taking a trip. Although looking at gas stations and airports it appears more than 16% of people are traveling this weekend.
According to a survey by , 42.3 million people plan to travel this weekend. That’s a huge jump compared to 2.5 million traveling people in the pandemic riddled 2021. It’s estimated 818 hot dogs will be consumed every second from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and shoppers can expect to receive 15-80% off retail prices today.
Learn more in the graphic below.
What a grotesque perversion of the holiday this crap is. Memorial Day is to remember the horror of war and the destruction it brings. We should ponder the consequences of our avarice, our adventurous national egos and the futility of accomplishing much good with violence. Yes, some wars are necessary to stymie the greed of truly evil humans. But that said, the idea of this holiday when created was to have us reflect on the loss of human lives that comes in any war. It certainly wasn’t in the minds of the people who felt compelled to call on us to “memorialize” the deaths that we would count how many hot dogs or beers are consumed!
So all of us having people over for hot dogs and beer today are jerks? Americans are allowed to celebrate in their own ways. It’s not for you to police how others memorialize the day.
RHS – Memorial Day is a day to honor military personnel who died while serving in the US military. In honor of no one else and for no other reason.
How, then, do you explain the Confederate celebrations?
Whatever it is, it certainly was not created around selling things for profit, vacations, eating, drinking and otherwise entertaining ourselves.
Rhs you are grotesque to sum up this holiday of your twisted view!! Thank you all who have served and are serving!!! God bless you all.
Golf etc, did you read what RHS posted? He said it should be limited to recognize those who died in service, not exploited for mercantile purposes. And that we should try and avoid killing more service people in the future.
@12:49 yes I read it.Every holiday has been completely commercialized, but today Americans can celebrate anyway they want because of those who fought and died for us. Once again thank to all that gave some and those who gave all.
11:15 – I couldn’t give you a direct answer so I read and copied the following formation from Wikipedia: “Memorial Day. Main articles: Memorial Day and Confederate Memorial Day. Most of the war dead are buried at Arlington National Cemetery and other national cemeteries near the battle zones. Memorial Day (or “Decoration Day”) originated shortly after the American Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. The Confederates set up a different day at first but then merged it into the national holiday. By the 20th century, Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans who have died while in the military service.”
Memorial Day was originally a parade by freed slaves in honor of Union soldiers who had been abused and tortured by the Confederacy at a slaver’s race track turned into a prison: https://time.com/5836444/black-memorial-day/