We have holidays all the time. We expect them. We’ve grown up with them. We know what’s coming.
Christmas. Independence Day. Memorial Day. Gifts for loved ones. Vacation time. Religious services. Fireworks. It’s all programmed.
11 September is different. Nobody knows what to do. It’s not a holiday. It’s both more and less (for most of us) than the anniversary of a loved one’s death. It’s … different.
Margie nailed it as we talked about it last night. There’s been as much (if not more) talk about how do we mark 11 September as there’s been remembrance of it. Should TV stations show commercials? Should we watch replays or favor live broadcasts? Sit at home with the lights off, or wallow in the pathos. Wait for the films and documentaries to come out on DVD, or be in the now of it, ready or not? Should we be angry still? Fearful? Should we be getting on with our lives?
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a new holiday. Bright and shiny, but what to do on that day is obvious. If you have the day off, you take it (and mutter about the banks and post office being closed). If you don’t, you work (ditto). If you’re a kid, you get treated to Black History Month, or History of Color Month, or whatever it’s called this year. Simple.
This is the first national event, though, that’s been so commemorated. Was there national mourning the first anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake, or the Chicago Fire?
Pearl Harbor comes to mind, but by December 1942 we were neck deep in war, distracted, still bloodsoaked. There had been many more casualties, many more defeats — and a few victories — and while “Remember Pearl Harbor!” still rang true, it was followed by “… and Let’s Get Back to Work!” And now, sixty years later, it’s an historical footnote, as that generation passes on, a day to consider our national relationship with Japan and grainy black and white footage.
Will 11 September go that way?
There’s a sense that tomorrow, everything will be different. Again. Or back to the same. That the obligatory year of wearing black and hanging crepe will be over. Will it? Will the US go back to caring only about the latest music video, and simply mutter and lob a few cruise missiles at those who attack us? Will the changes in the law be rolled back, or become just part of the background noise of government?
Have things really changed?
What will 11 September be like next year? And the year after? Will there be non-stop news coverage, total saturation of the op-ed pages? A quasi-national holiday?
Probably not.
Whether it will fade away, evolve into something more institutional, or be supplanted by the memories of some even more dire (or more recent) tragedy, it will be different.
Life goes on.