How May Day Became America’s Missing Holiday

By Brandyn Buchanan

You’re exhausted.

Let’s face it, the last couple of years have been bad for the average person’s mental health.

Whether it was the virus, the cops, the economy — it’s been a historically stressful time. So it makes sense that people have been a little extra enthusiastic about the holidays this year.

It’s an international holiday in the rest of the world, but in America, May Day is a little less relevant than Taco Tuesday.

It rhymes, it’s cute to say — and that’s about it.

So what happened? Why does the rest of the world get a holiday that we don’t? Especially in a culture that seems to celebrate any reason to spend money?

The Green and the Red

First of all — May Day started out as an environmental holiday –you were supposed to go outside and be in the woods. In the same way that Yule was a winter solstice holiday, May Day was a celebration of self, community, the great stuff going on in nature.

You don’t have to think of this as something mystical. It’s a pretty practical idea. You want a cheerful holiday in the depths of winter, and you want to have a holiday about nature, sex and fun right before the weather opens up.

There was a time when that was the natural rhythm of life and nature!

Of course, the idea of having a holiday that was about taking the day off and enjoying your life and “s-e-x” was deeply looked down on by that much beloved alliance of greedy industrialists and repressive religious leaders.

Any holiday where women danced around a giant pole was gonna be deeply intimidating over there.

They had a different idea: human beings that existed only to make money for factory owners.

With the rise of industrialism, people weren’t working some patch of land and figuring it out for themselves. Whether it was at an office or a factory, they were working at a job. And usually, it was usually a job where they didn’t get to go outside, didn’t get to see their families, and barely got a chance to sleep.

Even the CONCEPT of free time was under constant attack during the industrial era by people who wanted human beings to sleep and work pretty much exclusively. And they got their way. 12, 16, and 18 hour work days, child labor, and brutal factory accidents didn’t come by accident.

So it made sense that the fight for an 8 hour workday would be tied to May. What a better time to go outside and remember that your life doesn’t have to revolve around your job!

More and more people in the late 1800’s were pushed beyond the brink, and demanded something better.

Haymarket

And in 1886, a lot of things happened very quickly.

On May 1st, 350,000 workers across the country went on strike to demand an 8 hour work day. Two days later, the Chicago police killed picketing workers.

The next day, the police waited until the end of a massive peaceful protest to hassle the people that remained, and someone (nobody knows who) threw the first ever dynamite bomb used in the peacetime history of the country.

The city framed a handful of labor activists for throwing the bomb. There was no evidence tying them to the crime, and no evidence this had been planned as some kind of violent event — in fact one of the accused had brought his wife and child there. Many of them weren’t even at the site of the bombing when it happened!

The bailiff personally picked the jurors instead of the normal process of randomly picking people from the towns –and he must have had something against working people and immigrants, because none of those guys made the cut.

In Chicago.

Also, the Chicago Tribune offered money to the jurors for a conviction in public.

(I’d love to tell you this was a more nuanced situation, but sham trials were even more common back then. If anything, I’m holding back how bad it was!)

They got their verdict.

An International Movement

But in countries around the world, this backfired in the worst possible way. Average people from other countries witnessed the American justice system up close, and were horrified at what they saw. While the subsequent governor pardoned three surviving activists and condemned the obvious injustice, the damage had been done.

A world labor conference set aside May 1st as International Labor Day, a great time to remember that we don’t just work to survive, but to enjoy the planet we’re all spinning together on. It’s recognized in almost every industrialized country.

Of course, not everywhere. In fact, in China, the government was so intimidated by people setting their own hours that they mandated a holiday literally called “Loyalty Day” to teach the citizens proper values.

…

Did I say China? Just kidding, that’s the United States. We still have Loyalty Day on the books today.

Yikes.

A lot has changed — thanks to generations of people who were willing to take on unpopular battles and work strategically. But it feels more and more like people are working harder for less.

Too many people are spending a third of the day doing jobs that they don’t love — or working two jobs! And too many people here and around the world are undervalued, abused and used as human leverage for every dollar. It’s no surprise that so many people in the Latino community have brought May Day back in force as a day of action for workers and immigrants.

You don’t need to tell everyone you meet about the secret origins of May Day.

But you should remember the reason for the season — don’t spend May Day indoors, making some social media nerd even more money.

If you’re capable, get outside. Call someone you love on the phone. Meet your neighbors.

Enjoy your peace.

And for just a couple minutes, remember how it was earned.

Brandyn Buchanan is a copywriter and podcaster from West Atlanta. You can follow him on Twitter as @BrandynBuchanan or follow NotSafeMedia on YouTube.