What a load of hooey. I lived in Louisiana in the early 1990's and they didn't even celebrate Memorial Day there at all. The kids went to school and we didn;t get a three day weekend. The reason? Memorial Day was first introduced after the Civil War as a remembrance to the Union war dead. People in the South did not want to be included in that, so they substituted Confederate Decoration Day. You can;t get much more All American than that, now can you?