Today is May Day, International Workers’ Day. Back in the bad old days, we’d be treated to massive, mandatory displays of Soviet military might, all those legions of Red Army soldiers goose-stepping through Red Square before Lenin’s Tomb, followed by tanks & mobile rocket launchers.
We’re talking macho central in a grim, socialist kind of way. But reliable, something you could count on long after Santa had disappointed you in that matter of the Wilson Hammer 6 that never showed up under the tree.
Celebrating the value of the work force has been going on for a while. It’s a strong enough statement that both Adolf Hitler & Pius XII took steps to co-opt it. In the 30s Hitler staged Nazi parades that out-glitzed the workers’. When his thugs weren’t beating them with clubs & truncheons.
& to counteract the godless communists, the Pope cooked up a saint’s day in 1955: Saint Joseph the Worker. (That would be Joseph the carpenter, husband of Mary the mother of Jesus.)
This is also the Celtic celebration of Beltane—the welcoming in of Summer. (It’s the calendar opposition to Samhain, the basis for Halloween.)
& there’s a bunch of stuff about maypoles, drinking & fertility bits, although I haven’t seen much of that lately.
Whatever—whether you’re into maypoles, missiles or mead, take the occasion to think kindly about workers of all sorts.
Unless they’re employees of hedge funds or investment banks.
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