Labor Day...
Is actually pretty interesting. It dates back to 1882, and we can thank NY for the idea...
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."
How do we spend it? I don't really know, not having grown up in a family that bothered to do so... Today, I worked on a story and cleaned out the laundry room. Labor. Seemed appropriate. And I know a lot of folks grill out, and stores hold sales... which means it's a lot like Mem'l Day and the 4th of July.
But what else? Does anyone out there celebrate it for real?
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."
How do we spend it? I don't really know, not having grown up in a family that bothered to do so... Today, I worked on a story and cleaned out the laundry room. Labor. Seemed appropriate. And I know a lot of folks grill out, and stores hold sales... which means it's a lot like Mem'l Day and the 4th of July.
But what else? Does anyone out there celebrate it for real?
1 Comments:
The irony for me in this holiday is that the truest laborers—the blue collar workers, the immigrant workers, fast food cooks, hotel maids, cashiers, bus drivers, etc.—don't get to observe the holiday.
These are incidentally the same workers who are frequently not offered vacation or are unable to take vacation time. So, there's that: I'm home alone and my boyfriend is sitting in a nearly-empty mall today watching a counter.
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