🇺🇸 Memorial Day

Memorial Day is the US federal holiday honouring military personnel who died in service of the country. It falls on the last Monday of May — a date fixed by the 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which converted four federal holidays from fixed dates to designated Mondays to create predictable three-day weekends. The original observance, called Decoration Day, dates to the post-Civil-War 1860s, when communities North and South gathered to decorate the graves of soldiers killed in the war.

The day's anchor traditions are commemorative: a national moment of silence at 3pm local time, the placing of flags on every grave at Arlington and other national cemeteries, the wearing of red poppies (a tradition adopted from the British / Canadian Remembrance Day movement), and televised wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Popularly, Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of the American summer: the date when most public swimming pools open, beach towns begin charging peak rates, hot-dog and barbecue marketing pivots into high gear, and the Indianapolis 500 runs Sunday afternoon. Major retailers run "Memorial Day Sale" promotions that have become the year's first big-ticket discount window.

For PTO planners Memorial Day is one of the year's safest bridge wins: the federal holiday is fixed Monday, so taking the Friday before produces a guaranteed four-day weekend with one PTO day. Adding the full week before or after produces 9 days off for 4 PTO. School calendars vary: most US districts run through the first week of June, so the weekend itself doesn't yet trigger family-summer travel — though many beach destinations (Outer Banks, Cape Cod, the Jersey Shore, San Diego) hit their first big crowds. Air travel volume is high but predictable; AAA estimates 38–43 million Americans travel for the weekend, the bulk by car.