Spring at last

As noted over at my morning blog, today is May Day.

The researchers at Writer's Almanac summarize its significance:

...a holiday with its roots in the fertility celebrations of pre-Christian Europe. At Oxford University, otherwise intelligent young scholars jump off the Magdalen Bridge into a section of the Cherwell River that is two feet deep. At St. Andrews in Scotland, students gather on the beach the night before May Day, build bonfires, and then at sunrise they run into the very cold North Sea, some of them without any clothes on. There are bonfires and revelry in rural Germany. And there's hula dancing to the "May Day is Lei Day" song in Hawaii. In Minneapolis, there's the May Day Parade that marches south down Bloomington Avenue. It's organized by the In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, now in its 35th year and attracting about 35,000 people.

May Day is also Labor Day for much of the world, a day to commemorate the economic and social improvements of workers, like the eight-hour workday. It evolved from the 1886 Haymarket Square riots, so in the United States, President Cleveland moved Labor Day to September to disassociate it with the radical left. In 1958, U.S. Congress under Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 "Loyalty Day" and also "Law Day" — two holidays that have not caught on. May Day is still a prominent holiday in communist countries like Cuba and the People's Republic of China. Two years ago, a May Day rally in Los Angeles in support of illegal immigrants turned into the L.A. May Day Mêlée after police fired rubber bullets into a crowd of demonstrators they had ordered to disperse.

But beyond fertility and political solidarity it has a far simpler significance for me. It's a harbinger of Spring, not as marked by the calendar (there's nothing especially Springy for me about the 3d week of March, except the anticipation of baseball's Opening Day) but as measured by lengthening, warming, non-commuting days when I can sit out in my Little House and tap away on my keyboard and dream my quirky dreams. I'm doing it right now, and though it's a gray, drizzly, misting May Day, it feels like Spring at last. That's what May does for me, at least 'til the kids are released for summer break. So again, Happy May Day!