Democratic President Grover Cleveland was concerned that a labor holiday on May 1 would tend to become a commemoration of the Haymarket Affair and would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration around the globe. In 1887, he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative.
The date was formally adopted as a United States federal holiday in 1894. Thus, Labor Day is effectively the US' celebration of the sentiments embodied in the world's celebration on May 1...not too cool.
What IS cool, is that May 1 was established as The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker by Pope Pius XII in 1955 in order to counter communist and socialist appropriation of labor as a social good. Perhaps this sentiment is best explained by Ven. Fulton Sheen:
Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings.
Thus, by extension, I consider Labor Day to be a day to celebrate the model of St. Joseph. As such, in the midst of burgers and a day off, for me Labor Day is a day to celebrate the value of work within the context of my vocation as husband/father/provider, and not some socialist/communist bastardized view of agitation, hatred, and conflict.
GMTA.
May Day goes back to pre-Christian rites and fertility rituals. Ever heard of the dance of the May pole?
Christianity turned it into a “folk” festival to override the pagan meaning.
Was it an injustice to St. Joseph to try to paste him onto a communist holiday and thereby associate him unjustly with workers of the world uniting?
ps:
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