There are two major ways that May 1st is celebrated around the world. The first is International Labor Day, created by the American Federation of Labor in 1886 to protest poor working conditions. In 1886, it was incredibly common for workers to put in 16-hour days, so the AFL called for a day of striking on May 1, 1886, to demand 8-hour work days. This strike would become the Haymarket Massacre, a multi-day affair that resulted in strikers being attacked and killed. Following this protest, May 1st began to be celebrated as International Workers Day even outside of the US, as the workers’ rights movement began to grow.
It turned into a day to both advocate for workers, but also to celebrate the working class as a main driver of societal progress. One article published in the Fairmont Daily Sentinel argued that by 1907, there was no more need for a ‘labor war’ that May Day, as workers’ rights had been given and fewer workers were protesting their conditions. Nevertheless, May Day continues to be celebrated worldwide as International Workers Day, even in current times. However, you may be wondering why May Day is no longer celebrated as such in the United States. This is because the day was transitioned to focus on a more traditional celebration of spring around the Cold War era.
The Cold War era was marked by a fight against communism/socialism and the soviet union, and many communist ideas began to be associated with the workers’ rights movements. Further, countries like the soviet union would hold big parades and celebrations on May Day to celebrate workers. As the fear of communism raged on, the United States grew wary of celebrating May Day as International Workers Day and being associated with the ideas they were supposed to be fighting against. President Grover Cleveland aimed to address this issue by creating a different day for labor workers in the United States, Labor Day, which would instead happen in September and wouldn’t be associated with any communist ideas.
Many articles written about May Day in the decades following the Cold War emphasized the difference between American May Day and ‘communist’ May Day. In the Alice Echo News, a piece about May Day published on May 1st, 1990, referred to May Day as “a festival for the working class in socialist and communist countries” and a holiday with “parades and other festivities” in European countries. They encouraged Americans to continue to take part in the festival celebration of the spring version of May Day. Similarly, 7 years prior in 1983, the Alice Echo news also published an article about May Day festivals in different parts of the world. Here they again argued that “May Day has become a traditional time when communist politicians and followers flex their military muscles for the rest of the world”, condemning this celebration and instead praising other countries for celebrating the “return of spring”. This view of May Day was not unique to this one paper, it was a rhetoric shared across dozens of publications at the time. The Mineral Daily News Tribune published an article in 1980 titled “May Day celebrations are boycotted by the West”, applauding the majority of NATO members who did not attend the May Day parade in Moscow. Another article condemning May Day protests in the Durant Daily Democrat published in 1968 was captioned with the phrase “it’s loyalty day in US”. These are just a few examples of the way International Labor Day was framed within the media, which played a large role in the switch to more traditional celebrations.
The United States began to transition May Day’s meaning away from labor and instead became a celebration of something different. Many communities began to focus on celebrating the spring!
The Durant Daily Democrat highlighted one May Day tradition, a yearly parade and pageant in Minneapolis that brought in nearly 35,000 people. The Big Stone Headlight published an article in 1940 sharing the revival of ‘traditional’ May Day celebrations in South Dakota. Some common activities included a dance around the Maypole (a pole decorated with ribbons), a May queen being chosen, and of course the May baskets.
The most common way to celebrate May Day was to create baskets for neighbors or friends. These baskets were often handmade out of paper or other materials, and traditionally filled with spring flowers and sweet treats. Most of the time, these baskets were made by children with the help of their parents, and then passed out. They would place their May baskets on the recipient’s porch, knock on the door, yell “May basket!” and run away. In the Carroll Daily Times Herald, author Brenda Heithoff shared her experiences with May Day growing up, reflecting on the simple celebration of creating and sharing baskets. However, she mentioned that through talking to children in her town of Carroll, Iowa, that by 2000, the tradition of May Day baskets had become a thing of the past. One thing that became clear to me in my research of May Day is that celebrations are highly regional! Growing up in central Iowa, I remember celebrating May Day with baskets when I was younger. Similarly to early celebrations of May Day, we would create baskets filled with treats, place them on our neighbors’ porches, ring their doorbells, and run away. While I have stopped celebrating May Day as I have gotten older, the younger children in my neighborhood still participate in it every year, so it is still alive in some areas!
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the history of May Day! I know that I was previously clueless about the origins of the day, or how differently it was celebrated in different parts of the world! Join me again next week to discover more of history’s hidden gems and timeless tales.
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