May Day is a May 1 celebration with a long and varied
history, dating back millennia. Throughout the years, there have been many
different events and festivities worldwide, most with the express purpose of
welcoming in a change of season (spring in the Northern Hemisphere). In the
19th century, May Day took on a new meaning, as an International Workers’ Day
grew out of the 19th-century labor movement for worker’s rights and an
eight-hour workday in the United States. May Day 2021 will be celebrated on Sunday,
May 1, 2022.
The Celts of the British Isles believed May 1 to be the most
important day of the year, when the festival of Beltane was held.
This May Day festival was thought to divide the year in half,
between the light and the dark. Symbolic fire was one of the main rituals of
the festival, helping to celebrate the return of life and fertility to the
world.
When the Romans took over the British Isles, they brought with
them their five-day celebration known as Floralia, devoted to the worship of
the goddess of flowers, Flora. Taking place between April 20 and May 2, the
rituals of this celebration were eventually combined with Beltane.
Beltrane is one of the four
Gaelic seasonal festivals—along with Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasadh—and is similar to the Welsh Calan Mai.
Beltane
is mentioned in some of the earliest
Irish literature and is associated with important events in Irish
mythology. Also known as Cétshamhain ("first of summer"), it marked the
beginning of summer and it was when cattle were driven out to the summer pastures. Rituals were performed to
protect the cattle, crops and people, and to encourage growth.
Beltane
celebrations had largely died out by the mid-20th century, although some of its
customs continued and in some places it has been revived as a cultural event.
Since the late 20th century, Celtic neopagans and Wiccans have observed Beltane or a related festival
as a religious holiday. Some neopagans in the Southern Hemisphere celebrate
Beltane on or around 1 November.
Villagers would enter the woods to
find a maypole that was set up for the day in small towns (or sometimes
permanently in larger cities). The day’s festivities involved merriment, as
people would dance around the pole clad with colorful streamers and ribbons.
Historians believe the first maypole
dance originated as part of a fertility ritual, where the pole symbolized male
fertility and baskets and wreaths symbolized female fertility.
The maypole never really took root in
America, where May Day celebrations were discouraged by the Puritans. But
other forms of celebrations did find their way to the New World.
The connection between May Day and labor rights began in the
United States. During the 19th century, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, thousands of men, women and children were dying
every year from poor working conditions and long hours.
In an attempt to end these inhumane
conditions, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which would
later become the American Federation of Labor, or AFL) held a convention in Chicago in 1884. The FOTLU proclaimed
“eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.”
The following year the Knights of Labor—then America’s largest labor
organization—backed the proclamation as both groups encouraged workers to
strike and demonstrate.
On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000
workers (40,000 in Chicago alone) from 13,000 business walked out of their jobs
across the country. In the following days, more workers joined and the number
of strikers grew to almost 100,000.
Overall, the protests were peaceful,
but that all changed on May 3 where Chicago police and workers clashed at the
McCormick Reaper Works. The next day a rally was planned at Haymarket Square to
protest the killing and wounding of several workers by the police.
The speaker, August Spies,
was winding down when a group of officers arrived to disperse the crowd. As the
police advanced, an individual who was never identified threw a bomb into their
ranks. Chaos ensued, and at least seven police officers and eight civilians
died as a result of the violence that day.
Seven of the convicted men received a
death sentence, and the eighth was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In the end,
four of the men were hanged, one committed suicide and the remaining three were
pardoned six years later.
A few years after the Haymarket and
subsequent trials shocked the world, a newly formed coalition of socialist and
labor parties in Europe called for a demonstration to honor the “Haymarket
Martyrs.” In 1890, over 300,000 people protested at a May Day rally in London.
The workers’ history of May 1 was
eventually embraced by many governments worldwide, not just those with
socialist or communist influences.
https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/history-of-may-day
Great coverage of Beltane. If you visit Ireland, go to a historic hilltop north of Dublin, called Knowth en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowth
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