Comment by lostlogin

2 days ago

> It's 1st of May here

Is that date significant somewhere? It was an nice sunny Friday for me.

It's May Day, which is a labour holiday everywhere except North America commemorating the Haymarket Affair when American police brutally repressed striking workers .

In North America we have Labor Day in September to distance it from the historical associations with actual organizing and police brutality.

  • Still widely noted in Chicago, where the Haymarket riot took place. There's even a very well-attended reenactment every year.

    North America is a big place. Generalizations always fail.

  • You do know that no sea/ocean has split the continent and that Mexico is still in North America right?

    1st of may is festive day in Mexico.

It's huge in Berlin. First sunny and warm day this year and techno parties everywhere.

May Day - like labour day in Canada/USA... but on the first of May

  • I would argue nothing about American Labor Day has anything to do with labor at all. Honestly we should just rename it “Summer’s End” because there is literally no theme. The ad flyers for the sales on that weekend have, if any perceivable theme at all, red, white and blue / Stars and Stripes for some reason. It’s traditional that school starts the day after it, but in many places that’s been dragged several weeks sooner into August for some sick reason.

    We just don’t even have any holiday that honors labor, laborers, or labor unions.

    • >> We just don’t even have any holiday that honors labor, laborers, or labor unions.

      That holiday is May Day but it's not federally recognized in the US specifically to hinder labor organizing in this country. President Grover Cleveland went with the September alternative proposed by one of the early unions because it was "less inflammatory" than May Day which was preferred by all the other unions.

    • > I would argue nothing about American Labor Day has anything to do with labor at all. Honestly we should just rename it “Summer’s End” because there is literally no theme.

      Isn't that true of most holidays pretty much anywhere in the West these days? Sure, there's Christmas and Halloween and Easter that have specific themes, but excepting deeply-religious communities who practice associated traditions, they're as meaningful as cosmetic items in free-to-play games. But every country has a bunch of other holidays that most people don't know or care about much beyond knowing it's a day off.

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