<P> Across the United States, the central event is attending one of the thousands of parades held on Memorial Day in large and small cities . Most of these feature marching bands and an overall military theme with the Active Duty, Reserve, National Guard and Veteran service members participating along with military vehicles from various wars . </P> <P> In 1915, following the Second Battle of Ypres, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a physician with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, wrote the poem, "In Flanders Fields". Its opening lines refer to the fields of poppies that grew among the soldiers' graves in Flanders . </P> <P> In 1918, inspired by the poem, YWCA worker Moina Michael attended a YWCA Overseas War Secretaries' conference wearing a silk poppy pinned to her coat and distributed over two dozen more to others present . In 1920, the National American Legion adopted it as their official symbol of remembrance . </P> <P> Scholars, following the lead of sociologist Robert Bellah, often make the argument that the United States has a secular "civil religion"--one with no association with any religious denomination or viewpoint--that has incorporated Memorial Day as a sacred event . With the Civil War, a new theme of death, sacrifice and rebirth enters the civil religion . Memorial Day gave ritual expression to these themes, integrating the local community into a sense of nationalism . The American civil religion, in contrast to that of France, was never anticlerical or militantly secular; in contrast to Britain, it was not tied to a specific denomination, such as the Church of England . The Americans borrowed from different religious traditions so that the average American saw no conflict between the two, and deep levels of personal motivation were aligned with attaining national goals . </P>

Where was the first official memorial day observed