In my opinion, public services — aside from memorial Masses or church services — commemorating horrors such at Newtown should be brief, restrained, apolitical, and at these intervals: one year later, five years later, ten years later, 25 years later, 50 years, 100, etc. If families and friends of the people murdered at Newtown want to go to Mass and pray for the victims every single day for the rest of their lives, I say, good for them. But a public ceremony at merely the six month mark? Too soon.
I am surprised they waited this long.