Holidays and traditions What is Remembrance Day? The Armistice that brought an end to the fighting of the First World War was signed on November 11th 1918. Remembrance Day is commemorated annually in Britain on the Sunday nearest to November 11, which falls on November 13 this year. Two weeks before Remembrance Day paper poppies made by ex-service personnel begin to be sold by volunteers all over Britain. The red poppies represent the poppies that grew in the cornfields of Flanders where many thousands of soldiers lost their lives in the First World War. Wearing a poppy -- the symbol of remembrance - remains a small yet significant gesture which helps British people to remember the price of freedom. It is a price which is still being paid, with more than 12,000 British servicemen and women killed or injured in active service since 1945, and 53% of the regular armed forces currently under the age of 30. The funds raised by the Poppy Appeal represent half of the $83 million the Royal British Legion spends each year on the welfare of ex-service personnel and their families. It was an American woman, Moina Michael, who thought of the idea of selling poppies to help care for disabled soldiers and their families. While working at the YMCA training headquarters at Columbia University in New York in 1918, she was inspired by the poem In Flanders Fields by Canadian Army doctor John McCrae. The poem's first verse is: In Flanders fields the poppies