This Memorial Day weekend unofficially kicks off a summer of celebration of our nation’s 250th year.

Most likely, it’ll come with the usual mix of cookouts and traffic jams on Route 209.

If the sun’s out, there may even be a brave soul who’ll dip a toe into Mauch Chunk Lake.

The backyard bashes, holiday sales and travel time have turned a day that was never meant to launch summer into an accepted, anointed cultural occurrence.

But it wasn’t always this way.

On the first Decoration Day – the original name – in 1868, our nation was licking wounds left by the Civil War. About 600,000 brave souls from both sides of the battlefield left behind widows, children and families that would carry their memories forever.

For that first observance, Gen. John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic asked Americans to set aside May 30 as a day to decorate the graves of Union soldiers with flowers.

That was it. No sales, no festivals and no holiday weekend.

It was simply a day for families to walk to their cemeteries with armfuls of flowers and place them on the graves of men who were no longer at the dinner table.

Locally, those observances must’ve been solemn and hard. Civil War dead weren’t names on a list in a faraway place.

They could’ve been miners from Summit Hill, canal workers from Weissport, Irish laborers from the patches of Panther Valley or sons of Mauch Chunk or Mahoning Township who signed up for the 81st Pennsylvania and never came home.

Decoration Day ceremonies were held in cemeteries where community members stood silent because everyone knew someone buried there. Veterans read aloud the names of their fallen comrades.

Flip to today, where our observances are often shaped by screen time and our addiction to speed.

This Memorial Day, we can see a photo of a flag-draped coffin, often among someone’s posts from a graduation party.

We can check out a new recipe for potato salad or a unique rub for ribs.

We’ll be able to watch a video of ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of veterans lay silent.

The speed and volume of information in today’s world – something each of those veterans sacrificed for – has made all that available.

Yet, almost none of that is sacred.

It’s not that we don’t care.

Organizations still place flags on graves. Fire companies roll out trucks as volunteers take time to show up at ceremonies or parades where aging one-time warriors gather to honor their predecessors.

Somewhere, prerecorded taps will echo from a bugle, only because there aren’t as many buglers as there once were.

The way we care these days competes with countless other things that somehow need our attention.

We interact digitally and electronically.

Though it’s only a click away, the distance between us has widened.

Earlier generations knew the fallen personally – maybe a Lansford Marine who died in the jungles of Vietnam, or a Nesquehoning soldier who was lost in Korea. How about the namesakes of the Coaldale Veterans of Foreign Wars Post who died hours apart – George Stembrosky, a sailor who died at Pearl Harbor, or John Katchak, a Marine who was killed on Wake Island?

Today, unless it’s a direct relative, many can’t recall the name of a single local service member who died in uniform.

The sacrifice of our military men and women has become something that we honor only in theory, but seldom in memory.

The explosion of information available and how easy it is to access has changed how we remember our war dead.

Have we made remembering our war dead optional?

We may not be less patriotic or moral, but we’re a lot more distracted than folks used to be.

Can we get back to those days?

Maybe not.

But we can do things that might restore the spirit of those early Decoration Days.

Read the names of our local war dead at local ceremonies.

Take a walk through older parts of cemeteries and pay attention to the bronze markers or flags on veterans’ graves.

Local students might use available technology to research a local veteran and tell their story.

And though it’s been largely forgotten, there’s something we all can do – even if just for a minute.

On Monday at 3 p.m., during the National Moment of Remembrance, put your phone down.

For just 60 seconds, let simple silence do what it used to do before technology took over.

Memorial Day was never meant to be a long weekend.

It was meant to preserve the memories and stories of our war dead.

As we celebrate this 250th year with phones, flags, cookouts, concerts and fireworks, maybe – for just a minute – we can do something even more patriotic.

Stop it all.

And pause to remember the names of those who got us here.

ED SOCHA | tneditor@tnonline.com

Ed Socha is a retired newspaper editor with more than 45 years’ experience in community journalism.

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.