Perhaps no holiday has more varied interpretations or is more politically volatile than \u201cMay Day,\u201d the first day of May.<\/p>\n
Some may know May Day best as a pagan Anglo-Saxon festival of celebration, actually a celebration of harvesting crops in May, somewhat of an odd raison d\u2019\u00eatre,<\/em> considering that there are relatively few vegetables to harvest in May.\u00a0 \u00a0In Cornwall, the celebration came to include girls dancing around the \u201cMay Pole,\u201d something that seems both odd and laden with phallic symbolism.<\/p>\n <\/a>Most know May Day as International Worker\u2019s Day, a combination celebration of the accomplishments of organized labor (more specifically the eight-hour work day) and a rally for further progress for the laborers of the world.\u00a0 Its origin was in Australia in 1856, well before workers in most countries came to realize that their agendas could be best advanced through organizing.<\/p>\n It has not been without incident; in 1886 it turned into a veritable riot at the Haymarket Square<\/a> in Chicago.\u00a0 On May 1 of that year, strikers were protesting the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. \u00a0It was peaceful enough, but continued, and on May 4, an unknown person threw a bomb at police.\u00a0 That and the ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of eight police officers and an undetermined number of civilians.\u00a0 Ultimately eight so-called anarchists were tried for murder and four were put to death.<\/p>\n