Pagan fertility festival, labor rights celebration and international cry of distress—what’s the big deal with May 1?
Pagan Festivals
Welcome to the merry month of May, when (typically) the flowers are blooming, the sun is shining and it finally feels like we’ve survived the winter.
Like many primeval holidays, May Day began as an agricultural festival to celebrate new life sprouting in the fields, and similar traditions were common across England and Europe. For ancient Celts, it was a “cross-quarter day” marking the midway point between the equinox and the solstice. Cattle and other livestock were driven to pasture, bonfires were lit and doors were decorated with flowers and colorful ribbons.
It was also a time of celebrations for some Native Americans, most famously through the Sun Dance (which, yes, gives its name to the film festival, by way of Butch Cassidy and a small town in Wyoming).
Click here for three ways to celebrate a classic May Day.
Celebrating Labor Rights
These days, May 1 is celebrated in many countries as International Workers Day, commemorating the Haymarket Incident in Chicago in 1886.
That fateful May, coordinated by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions—which later became the AFL, as in the AFL-CIO—hundreds of thousands of American workers went on strike across the country in support of the eight-hour workday. This was the so-called “Gilded Age” when U.S. wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few, and an average person worked 60+ hours in a six- or even seven-day workweek.
In Chicago, strikers were fired on by the police and some were killed. A rally was called in response, police advanced, violence escalated and ultimately eight labor leaders were seized, tried and hanged.
Why May? In all likelihood, because it would be nice out and not pose undue hardship for strikers. Ironically, in 1896, President Grover Cleveland was concerned that observance of Labor Day on May 1 would encourage Haymarket-style protests, so he set the American Labor Day in September—and the eight-hour day did not become law until 1940.
Click here to make it like a modern-day Wobbly.
An International Distress Call
May Day, or more properly mayday, may also make you think of crashing planes in movies like Sully or Black Hawk Down. The call is used to signal a life-threatening emergency and must be repeated three times in a row during the initial declaration ("mayday mayday mayday").
However, the call has nothing at all to do with the month of May. The phrase was conceived in the early 1920s by Frederick Stanley Mockford, officer-in-charge of radio at Croydon Airport, England. He had been asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff.
Since a lot of air traffic at the time was between Croydon and Paris, he proposed the term "mayday," the phonetic equivalent of the French m'aidez ("help me"). The previous distress call was the Morse code signal SOS, but this was not considered suitable for voice communication, "owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the letter 'S' by telephone."
Here are three ways to make sure you’re ready for any emergency.
Three ways to celebrate a classic May Day.
- Get outside and grow things. Here are some resources to help you Get Ready to Garden.
- Michigan doesn’t go big for May Day, but Hawai’i does, and Minneapolis, too! Check out these pictures and plans for the biggest May Day celebrations in the country.
- Don’t have a green thumb? You can still make some paper flowers and hang a May basket on your sweetie’s door.
Wobblies of the world unite!
The origin of “Wobbly” to describe the International Workers of the world is unclear, but the contributions of the Labor Movement are not. Here are three ideas to help you commemorate Labor history, without inciting a riot:
- Listen to (or read) famous Labor speeches like Martin Luther King Jr.’s Street Sweeper Speech or JFK’s Fair Labor Standards Speech.
- Stage a parade! Make a sign honoring your favorite labor hero. Get others to join you.
- Make a point to enjoy your “eight hours for what you will.”
Three ways to be prepared for anything.
- Get trained in first aid and CPR through the American Red Cross or through the Canton Fire Department.
- Next time you’re on an airplane, read the card in the seat pocket. Don’t want to wait? Check out this massive collection of safety cards in your downtime.
- Learn to fly or join a flight club at Willow Run Airport.
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