How Memorial Day Went From Somber Occasion to Summer Celebration

For as long as Memorial Day in the United States has been the widely acknowledged unofficial start of the summer season, Americans have been complaining that the holiday isn't celebrated the way it's supposed to be to be. When TIME commented in 1972 that the holiday had become "a three-day nationwide hootenanny that seems to have lost much of its original purpose," the magazine was already comparatively late to bemoaning Memorial Day's party reputation.