I didn’t even realize that yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day until late in the evening when I caught part of a locally produced documentary about the experience of Utahns during World War II. Like the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, it seems like Americans are not making as big a deal over this date as we used to. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention yesterday, but I really didn’t hear much background noise about the Day That Will Live in Infamy. There were a couple of articles in the Trib, but no big fold-out maps, no front-page photos, nothing splashy or eye-catching as in years past. No primetime TV specials, either, and only a cursory mention on the 10 o’clock news. Perhaps, as I proposed in regards to JFK’s death, the country is finally moving on. After all, the Greatest Generation is fast dying out, there seems to be nothing new to say about the event that began its war, and, perhaps most significantly, we have a new, more recent national tragedy to commemorate. As cold as it may sound to the older folks who are still among us, I’m willing to bet more Americans these days care about and feel a connection to the events of September 11, 2001, than December 7, 1941, or even November 22, 1963.
I’m not making a value judgment here; I’m not saying one generation’s tragedy should take priority over the previous one’s. It is simply what I think I see happening. And maybe that’s just the natural way of things. I’ve written before on this blog about the way pop-cultural artifacts don’t last the way we think they ought to, don’t carry their significance or effectiveness through time. Maybe national days of rememberance are the same way. For example, Veteran’s Day used to be Armistice Day, a commemoration of the end of World War I, which one generation used to optimistically believe would be the War to End All Wars. But how many of us now remembers that little factoid, or even know what caused the conflict whose end the day originally marked? Who really even thinks anymore of Veteran’s Day as anything other than as a day off from work?
I am enough of a traditionalist — enough of, dare I say it, a conservative — that I am uncomfortable with the declining interest in the events we’ve traditionally commemorated. It seems somehow neglectful, or even disrespectful, to just one day decide that we’ve paid enough honor to a particular event and now we’re safe to let it start slipping away. Even if those who actually experienced the event are mostly dead, as in the case of veterans of World Wars I and II, it seems like we ought to continue our observances, for the sake of their memories. If not that, then for the sake of a unifying tradition that makes us feel like we all live in the same country, with a shared history.
Perhaps such thinking is naive. I know, of course, that memories fade and new events overshadow those of the previous generations. But I can’t help feeling that, as a society, we’re doing something wrong by allowing this fade-out to happen.
Of course, the alternative — continuing to commemorate the Big Things that happened to every previous generation going all the way back to the founding — would lead to an untenable situation like the Romans had, where more days of the year are holidays than working days. How would we get regular mail delivery? When would we go to the bank? And most importantly, when would our favorite TV shows have a chance to run amid all the primetime retrospective documentaries?
It’d be mass chaos…
