dawnfoth wrote:this is the day we traditionally remember the fallen. Why wouldn't you, seems a more appropriate question...?
Because it's institutionalised and, despite all the individual reasons many people have for remembering, once it becomes institutionalised and formalised, it loses much of the personal aspect and teeters a very fine line between remembrance and glorification. We hear much about the glorious dead from those who are still sending people to die and - for me - as a national ceremony, with all the pressure on people to comply with it, it comes perilously close to the bizarre Islamic trick of telling young people they will become martyrs and get a great seat in heaven if they blow themselves up to kill the infidel.
I have every respect for people who serve their country and mourn the loss of young lives or their being blighted by injury, but I will not put it in a box and take it out on one day a year (the end of one amongst far too many wars) to show people how much my heart bleeds. What is the relevance of a particular date anyway? My mother died on a Hallowe'en, but I don't save it all up to Oct 31 to grieve or to miss her - that happens as and when I think of her and Hallowe'en may or may not be one of those times.