The Last Monday in May

There are no parades, no baseball games, no parties, and we stay home all the time anyway: why should we care that it is Memorial Day?

As Joan Rivers would say, “Oh, grow up!”

First of all, let’s be clear: Memorial Day is not about you. It’s about honoring the dead, which would make you think it would be a more sober holiday than it usually is nowadays.

And initially, it was. Memorial Day sprang from the practice of grave decorating that began in the Confederacy in 1861 and was adopted…