May is a month sandwiched by two holidays that should be among our most recognized and important. Like most others, though, their genesis and intent are largely unknown or ignored.
May 1 is a day of celebration that dates back to pre-Christian times, mostly observed by towns and villages to launch the planting season with revelry and community gatherings. On the ancient calendar, Feb. 1 was the first day of spring, and May 1 marked the first day of summer. (The solstice on June 21 was the start of “Midsummer.”)
The date remained significant even after the modern calendar was adopted and the church condemned the pagan rituals common to many May Day festivities.
In the Roman Catholic tradition, May is observed as Mary’s month, and May Day came to be a celebration of the Virgin Mary. Many schools incorporated skits and art projects based on the adornment of Mary’s head with flowers and ribbons. Other observances included the giving of “May baskets,” containing sweets or flowers and usually left anonymously on a friend’s or neighbor’s doorstep.
One May Day activity that continues from the celebration’s pagan roots is the dance or winding of the maypole. A tall wooden pole is set on end, with long colored ribbons suspended from the top. Celebrants each hold one of the strips (in my grade school, it was arranged boy-girl-boy-girl) and weave around one another and the pole until they run out of ribbon. The earliest known use of the maypole in America was in 1628, when the governor of New Plymouth wrote about a number of indentured servants who broke free to create their own colony, setting up a maypole in the center of the settlement.
May Day took on a whole different meaning after 1886, when labor organizations called a general strike May 1. Nearly 600,000 workers walked out across the country, asking for better working conditions and limiting work shifts to eight hours. In Chicago, owners at McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. called in the police, who fired on striking workers, killing several and injuring dozens more. The following day saw more police fire, but this time, seven officers were among the dozens killed.
Widely reported, those two incidents sparked worldwide outrage. Largely as a result, May Day has become a celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labor movement. Observed in more than 80 countries, it is often referred to as International Workers Day.
In the U.S., however, legislators acted to divert attention from the violent response against striking workers. Just days after settlement of a strike in which police killed several workers at the Pullman rail car company, Congress rushed through a bill to make Labor Day a national holiday — but designated the observance for the first Monday in September.
At the other end of May is Memorial Day, a holiday that Congress has expanded in scope. Originally a regional observance to decorate the graves of Union war dead, it eventually grew to honor those killed on both sides of the Civil War. Then called Decoration Day, it was adopted as an official holiday by a number of states.
After World War I, Decoration Day came to include the soldiers killed in that conflict, too. After World War II, it started to be termed Memorial Day and included the honoring of military members killed in all war actions.
It wasn’t until 1967 that Congress adopted it as a national holiday, officially designating the name as Memorial Day and the date of observance as May 30.
At the urging of business interests, less than a year later, legislators changed its observance to the last Monday in May. In the opinion of many, changing the date merely to create a three-day weekend has undermined the holiday’s very meaning. There is little doubt that this has significantly contributed to the nonchalance many of us display in observing Memorial Day.
But don’t be one of those. All that we enjoy in America has been secured and protected by men and women wearing the uniform and fighting on behalf of people they would never know, for principles from which they were unlikely to benefit. Honoring those who sacrificed everything is scant recompense.
This Memorial Day, volunteer with a veterans group or one of the service groups that places flags on the graves of G.I.s killed in action. At the very least, pause in whatever you may be doing and call the attention of those around you to the intended meaning of the holiday.
It’s the minimum we can do for those who gave the maximum.
Steve Bailey of Boulder Creek has spent plenty of time in recreational activities. Contact him at
sb*****@cr****.com
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