Rant #246: May Day Go Away

Tomorrow, May 1, is May Day.

This holiday isn't even listed in my desk calendar. All that is listed is Labor Day in Mexico.

But at one time, May Day was a big holiday here in the U.S.

I remember as a kid, maybe in kindergarten or first grade, that May 1 featured a big celebration at our school. We actually have film of myself and my class in the schoolyard doing some type of dance, and then dancing around a maypole.

I think the whole thing dated back to much earlier times. This was some type of fertility rite (egads!) or something to do with welcoming a good harvest, or something like that.

But May Day took on negative connotations toward the mid to late 1960s, and that's while nobody in this country even bats an eye at the day anymore.

I think it became linked to the then U.S.S.R. and became a "communist" holiday. It was a "workers" day or a "labor" day, and well, that even sounds un-American, doesn't it?

It's a day of political demonstrations and these events are organized by socialist groups, so we certainly can't celebrate a holiday like that here, that's for sure!

That's why, in a democracy, we don't celebrate it anymore.

Believe me, I can understand that entirely.

But I know that at one time we did celebrate it.

And I have the film to prove it.