Another Memorial Day has come and gone, a holiday dedicated to remembering. It seems appropriate, therefore, to pause and consider the relationship of memory to the imagination, in this case historical rather than personal memory. “Holiday” originally meant holy day, marked by a ritual dramatizing a central myth, and there is often a tension between that definition and the other definition of “holiday,” namely, “excuse for a party.” But what we are trying to get at here is the underlying myth.