Decoration Day (tradition)

Decoration Days in Southern Appalachia and Liberia are a living tradition of group ancestor veneration observances which arose by the 19th century. The tradition was subsequently preserved in various regions of the United States, particularly in Utah Mormon culture. While Decoration practices are localized and can be unique to individual families, cemeteries, and communities, common elements unify the various Decoration Day practices and are thought to represent syncretism of Christian cultures in 19th century Southern Appalachia with pre-Christian influences from the British Isles and Africa. Appalachian and Liberian cemetery decoration traditions pre-date the United States Memorial Day holiday (which was once also officially known as Decoration Day).
Appalachian, Utahn and Liberian cemetery decoration traditions have more in common with one another than with United States Memorial Day traditions which are focused on honoring the military dead. In the United States, cemetery decoration practices have been recorded in the Appalachian regions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, northern South Carolina, northern Georgia, northern and central Alabama, northern Mississippi, and the Rocky Mountain regions of Utah. Cemetery decoration has also been observed along routes of westward migration from that region: northern Louisiana, northeastern Texas, Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, and southern Missouri. The Utah tradition, dating back to the 19th century, has diffuse cultural origins, including roots in the English and Welsh origins of many early Mormon immigrants to the region.
According to scholars Alan and Karen Jabbour, "the geographic spread ... from the Smokies to northeastern Texas and Liberia, offer strong evidence that the southern Decoration Day originated well back in the nineteenth century. The presence of the same cultural tradition throughout the Upland South argues for the age of the tradition, which was carried westward (and eastward to Africa) by nineteenth-century migration and has survived in essentially the same form until the present."
According to the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, a Decoration or Decoration Day in Appalachia is "an occasion on which a family or church congregation gathers on a Sunday to place flowers on the graves of loved ones and to hold a memorial service for them. Traditionally this involved singing and dinner on the ground as well as a religious service." Decoration Days for particular cemeteries are held on Sundays in late spring or early summer. Decoration Day in Appalachia and in the Rocky Mountain regions of Utah has the character of an extended family reunion to which people travel hundreds of miles to clean and decorate graves as well as renew contacts with relatives and others. There often is a religious service and a picnic-like dinner on the grounds, the traditional term for a potluck meal at a cemetery or church.
Decoration Day practices are often specific to individual families and can incorporate ritualistic elements. By 1933, Elizabeth Hooker's research into regional religious institutions and practices found that cemetery decoration was ubiquitous throughout the Appalachian Highlands and noted that "few churches fail to have such an event once a year"
One approach that is used by families and communities that no longer live near a cemetery is to establish cemetery committees and a charitable trust which may include a financial endowment to pay for ongoing maintenance costs.
Decoration Day is a national holiday in Liberia, a nation which was settled starting in 1822 by free and formerly enslaved African Americans. Decoration Day was designated a national holiday and set as the second Wednesday in March by an Act approved on October 24, 1916.
So important are Decoration Day traditions that during the Ebola virus epidemic in Liberia it became essential for the Liberian government, the World Health Organization and other medical aid agencies to adapt Ebola protocols to fit within this cultural context: "The prospect of not having a location to visit or a grave to 'clean' by cutting the grass and laying wreaths on the national holiday of 'Decoration Day' was deeply disturbing, as was the idea that unfulfilled obligations to the dead could result in a lifetime of misfortune for the living." In addition to revising protocols for treatment of the bodies of the dead, authorities also created emergency policies affecting the homecoming and false burial traditions due to large groups people assembling who were at risk of contracting the disease.
In addition to being observed in Appalachia and Liberia, Decoration Day customs spread and became localized along the routes of nineteenth-century migration pattern westward from the Appalachian Mountains. Additional lines of spread came from Welsh traditions, particular among Mormon immigrants in Utah. While these customs may have associated in part with social rituals to honor military dead, numerous differences exist between Decoration Day customs and Memorial Day, including that the date is set differently by each family or church for each cemetery to coordinate the maintenance, social, and spiritual aspects of decoration. Currently, the end of May and the national holiday of Memorial Day has been accepted as the most common day of celebration in the USA.
Decoration Day practices are distinguished from other Appalachian and Liberian cemetery decoration practices and observances honoring the dead in that Decoration Day observances are focused on a single shared date when people gather in the cemetery.
In the context of cemetery decoration, "cleaning" refers the process of removing overgrown plants and debris from the cemetery as well as other general maintenance to the grounds. Cleaning also refers to the process of preparing individual grave sites for decoration, such as remounding graves.
Concrete graves and crypts are common in Liberia, where decoration rituals therefore often include annual whitewashing or repainting the concrete.
Traditionally, cemeteries in Southern Appalachia featured mounded graves and scraped, grassless ground. These cemetery features are characteristic of the Upland South Cemetery Complex. Today, Appalachian cemeteries can also be landscaped with grass without mounded graves.
According to the Mitchell County Historical Society, "[f]resh flowers were used in earlier times and are considered the best. Homemade crepe paper flowers were later used, and now artificial flowers are mainly used for decorating. Flowers can be placed on graves in any number of ways, including creating attractive patterns." Floral wreaths are common in both Appalachian and Liberian grave decoration.
Decoration can also include the placing of tokens at individual graves. Tokens are often personal or household items significant to the relationship between the person who places the token and the deceased. Examples include shoes, dishware, knives, and items bearing inscriptions.
In Appalachia and Liberia, the term homecoming is widely, although not exclusively, used to describe the tradition of families who have migrated away to hosting a family reunion at the cemetery as part of the decoration festivities.
Food is a common element in many cemetery decoration traditions. In Appalachia, it is common to refer to a "Dinner on the Ground" which is generally a potluck meal offered at the cemetery site. Many cemeteries feature tables or covered areas for these meals. In Liberia, a common tradition is to offer libation, the pouring an alcoholic beverage over the dead.
Singing is also common across Decoration Day traditions. The Sacred Harp style of music was formerly popular in Appalachia on some Decoration Days.
Appalachian and Liberian decoration rituals often incorporate the retelling of the life of people who have been interred in the cemetery. In Appalachia this practice of often referred to as funeralizing. In Liberia, this practice is referred to as false burial and, like funeralizing, is characterized by first burying the body immediately and then planning a larger memorial service during a cemetery decoration. In both Appalachia and Liberia, these practices have the practical benefit of allowing people who live far away to participate in funeral rituals. In some parts of Liberia, false burial is particularly associated with festivities and rituals that incorporate dancing.
In some Liberian cemeteries including Monrovia's Palm Grove Cemetery, decoration rituals require groups of "criers" to commemorate the lives of those who have been buried. Such is the importance of the criers that people are available for hire to cry for dead relatives.
Cemetery Sunday (also sometimes referred to as Blessing of the Graves) is an annual Roman Catholic observance on which a priest blesses the graves in the local cemetery and leads parishioners in devotions or celebrates Mass. These rituals are also celebrated in Protestant and non-denominational cemeteries in Ireland. Parishioners prepare by cleaning family graves and – in some traditions – decorating the graves. Grave decorations have historically incorporated flowers as well as crafts and mementos. Scholar Barbara Graham connects Cemetery Sunday traditions to the Decoration Day traditions of Appalachia and Liberia as many Irish and Scotch-Irish refugees and other immigrants from Ireland settled in Central and Southern Appalachia.
In southern Wales and nearby portions of England, Palm Sunday is called 'Sul y Blodau' ('Flowering Sunday') and it is traditional to decorate graves with flowers on that day, especially in the industrial towns and villages. Scholars Alan and Karen Jabbour have postulated that Flowering Sunday might be connected to Appalachian cemetery decoration traditions.
Welsh cemetery cleaning and decoration traditions may have begun as an Easter celebration or seasonal rite before becoming more commonly associated with Palm Sunday. As early as 1786, cleaning and flower decorations were attested by William Matthews during a tour of South Wales. Richard Warner attested in 1797 "the ornamenting of the graves of the deceased with various plants and flowers, at certain seasons, by the surviving relatives" and noted that Easter was the most popular time for this tradition. By 1803, Malkin's observations reflect the shift away predominantly associating the custom with Easter:
Peter Roberts characterized these practices in 1815: "In many parts, and especially in South Wales, the friends of the deceased take much and laudable pains to deck the grave with flowers. A bordering of slate or stones, is nicely run around it, and the top bound in by stones, laid with taste, in a tessellated manner, which has an ornamental effect..."
By 1839, Charles Redwood referred to this tradition of cleaning and decorating graves on Palm Sunday as the "old custom": "All the village were there, engaged, after the old custom, in trimming and adorning the graves of their deceased relatives. Some were raising the sides with fresh turf, and putting fresh earth upon the surface; and others whitewashed the stones at the ends; while the women planted rosemary and rue, and the girls brought baskets of spring flowers, crocuses, daffodils and primroses, which were placed in somewhat fantastic figures upon all the graves."
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