May Day's a mixed salad of named holidays. Definitely pot luck.
To the Celts, May Day divided the year into dark and light halves. Doesn't get much simpler or more fundamental than that…
Get yours while the
getting's good. Everybody make some babies.
Later, the Roman's brought with them their five day celebration of flowers and Floralia it became.
During the 6th Century, Walpurga's feast got tacked on. Saint Walpurga was, among other things, anathema to witches.
Later still, Walpurgis Night became the one night of the year when witches held their annual earthly convention, with Satan the keynote speaker.
So on Saint Walpurga's special night, evil gets to walk the earth. Go figure.
During the 1880's, we dragged May Day into the Industrial Age.
May 3rd 1886, Chicago Police opened fire on striking workers, killing at least two. Things went south from there.
May 4th at Haymarket Square, a large crowd agitated for justice on behalf of the fallen, along with an eight hour work day. The gathering was peaceful. Chicago's mayor made an early appearance.
The evening wore on. Rhetoric grew hot. The police ordered the crowd to disperse. Someone threw a bomb.
More than 60 officers were wounded, eight died. No one then or now can say for sure how many protestors were killed or wounded.
Literally, working folk didn't count. Especially not socialists, the (then) new Satan.
Eight men were charged with the bombing. Pretty much everyone knew none of them threw the bomb. At least one had gone home by then. All save one were sentenced to hang. Four did. A fifth killed himself (or was murdered) before he could be hung.
By 1889, May Day was declared International Workers Day. The date was chosen by the American Federation of Labor to mark the strike leading to Haymarket that resulted in what some consider the most egregious miscarriage of justice in United States history.
In 1947 Congress declared May 1st to be Loyalty Day, no lie. In '58 they changed that to Law Day.
Didn't help.
When I was a kid the godless Russkies owned May Day. Every year the mainstream media ladled Russian propaganda direct from Red Square straight onto American dinner tables.
Can't guess what May Day means in modern times. All things to all people, perhaps.
Dark into light sounds good to me.
Go pagans.
#mayday #walpurgisnight #haymarket
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