uncelebration

plural uncelebrations

1. A memorial of something bad.

   He and Bobby Clark had a lot in common, and he was first on the guest list to Bobby's vets-only annual uncelebration of the Tet Offensive.

   2007, Dana Stabenow, A Deeper Sleep, →ISBN, page 152

   2 more examples

   Discussing Men at Arms, the first volume of his later war trilogy, Waugh explained that it "was a kind of uncelebration, a history of Guy Crouchback's disillusion with the army.

   1990, Robert Reginald Garnett, From Grimes to Brideshead: The Early Novels of Evelyn Waugh, →ISBN

   In her essay, she took her cue from the conflicted uncelebrations surrounding the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's contact with the Americas.

   1998, Michele Gillespie, Catherine Clinton, Taking Off the White Gloves: Southern Women and Women Historians, →ISBN

2. A celebration that lacks any celebratory feeling or actions.

   If the Osage or Wazhazhe reference scheme is celebratory, not to say mythic and historic, the follow-on Las Vegas reference scheme is all uncelebration.

   2008, Gerald Vizenor, Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence, →ISBN, page 341

   2 more examples

   In contrast to all the whooppee that surrounded the Corvette's Silver Anniversary the observation of its 10th year of existence in 1962 had all the trappings of an uncelebration.

   1978, Cars & Parts - Volume 21, page 26

   And the idea of a celebration that celebrated only her, or a celebration that celebrated only celebration, struck her as being cold, narcissistic, and ultimately sterile; a joyless uncelebration in fact.

   1983, Hugh Fleetwood, A Dance to the Glory of God, page 78