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Before Memorial Day became the anchor of a long weekend, it was known as Decoration Day. Shoppers on Main Street dropped coins into veterans’ buckets and received red crepe-paper poppies to pin proudly to their shirts.

The observance honors members of the military who died while serving the United States. Its first official celebration is commonly traced to Waterloo, New York, in 1866, when residents decorated the graves of Civil War veterans. The practice spread to other communities and was observed each year on May 30, regardless of the day of the week.

May 30 was selected because no Civil War battle had occurred on that date, according to a speech Gen. James Garfield delivered at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868. Congress acted in 1968 to establish Memorial Day as a federal holiday observed on the final Monday of May.

For one family, the day also meant visiting the grave of a brother killed in the Korean War. On the way to the cemetery at the southern edge of town, local women stood along the street with buckets of homegrown peonies. His mother would buy about a dozen and place them on her son’s grave.

The family is no longer in that hometown for Memorial Day, but its tradition of decorating graves continues. Now, relatives honor all the family members who have died—and have added a playful decorating competition to the solemn ritual.

They begin with a trip to Walmart for artificial flowers in nearly every color, then arrange the supplies across a backyard picnic table. Each participant selects a grave and fills a flower “saddle” designed to rest atop its headstone.

The contestants have included daughters, nieces, great-nieces, great-great-nieces, granddaughters and anyone else persuaded to join. When the arrangements are finished, a husband brave enough to risk choosing the wrong winner serves as judge.

The contest does not erase the sadness behind the observance. Instead, it has given the family a creative and joyful way to gather, remember loved ones and carry an old Decoration Day custom into a new generation.