Why do we celebrate Labor Day?

Vanity ^ | 09/01/2019 | outofsalt

[outofsalt]

Labor Day came about because workers felt they were spending too many hours and days on the job. Like many liberal initiatives the name of their programs are often antithetical to their objectives; shorter work days and weeks was what the unions were protesting for. Why don't we call it Indolence Day?

[outofsalt]

It is not a patriotic celebration like Memorial Day or Independence Day. The Marquis de Lafayette, whose real name was, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier said, "Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country."

It is not a religious holiday, like Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims gave thanks to God. George Washington also wanted to have days of Thanksgiving after the Revolutionary War. Lincoln made it official after the civil war asking Americans to ask God to, “commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” Originally the last Thursday in November, Roosevelt move it up a week to spur Christmas shopping. And the NFL has, well, you get it

Christmas and Easter are obvious, though we are supposed to call them by their Pagan eponyms, "Winter and Spring holidays" New Years is also a celebration of the past and future. Labor Day? pfftt. I need to get some beer and hot dogs. How will you celebrate?

[outofsalt]

Like many liberal initiatives, their programs have names that are opposite to their intentions. (somehow got cut out of my header) Labor Day should be Indolence Day. We celebrate nothing by doing nothing.

[Larry Lucido]

By being indolent.

[Drew68]

Labor Day? pfftt. I need to get some beer and hot dogs. How will you celebrate?

By not working. Hell, if you ask me, Labor Day is one of the few holidays left that we're allowed to celebrate by enjoying ourselves. Killjoys have ruined Memorial Day. "How dare you eat hot dogs and drink beer when soldiers have died!!!"

I'm going to enjoy myself tomorrow! Thanks, Socialists, for a 40-hour work week and child labor laws!

[noexcuses]

We are both retired so Labor Day has lost it’s only past worth to us (paid day off).

[al baby]

We need to have a Welfare Day where we honor those that do nothing so unfair to them Im shocked
I tell ya shocked Obama dint do it

[Texas Eagle]

Labor Day is the only holiday on which I do not fly the flag. It "celebrates" Unions, not work. Unions have destroyed this country.

I hope some day Labor Day is changed to Free Enterprise Day.

[EEGator]

I’m sure things were grand working in steel mills in the early 1900’s.
I can’t imagine why unions came about.

Globalists, not unions, are destroying our country.

[napscoordinator]

Every dang holiday has become a bash fest. It’s ridiculous. Don’t like the holiday, too bad. We get to here how awful Columbus Day is right after how bad Labor Day is. Screw it!

[SkyDancer]

I thought it was a day to honor all working Americans.

[VanDeKoik]

It pumps a few million into the Michigan economy from people getting in that last trip to the lake, so it is a bit of a shoulder shrug here, which is surprising when it used to be this huge day for unions to complain that America was losing jobs overseas...

Oh, well that explains why the union bosses dont make a big fuss anymore.

[Berlin_Freeper]

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Day

[Mr. N. Wolfe]

Is it just a coincidence that Mother’s day is nine months after Labor day?

[TheDandyMan]

At the time the holiday was being instituted, the norm in steel mills was 12 hour shifts, with one 24 hour shift prior to your one shift off per week. Workplace death rates were off the charts. Men coupled railway cars with their bare hands, rose on the roofs and applied the brakes manually, were constantly crushed, swept off, thrown in front of the engines. Large-scale farming of wheat ruined the poorest farmers settling in arid, hardscrabble places trying to establish their own farms and escape the industrial hell. On top the unrest, both social and economic, from large scale immigration and disagreements over international gold standards, the gold supply, silver, etc. I could go on and on, but suffice to say, the late 1800s, early 1900s were not a good time for working people in America.

Those indolent bastards.

[outofsalt]

I had not made that connection! LOL

[bigbob]

Because it’s a long stretch from July 4 to Halloween, and we need the sales revenue.

[outofsalt]

"Every dang holiday has become a bash fest."

Mind you, I'm not opposed to drinking holidays like St. Patty's or Cinco de Mayo.

[rusty schucklefurd]

Re: “I thought it was a day to honor all working Americans.”

Absolutely correct. It only has meaning to working or retired Americans.

The naysayers can go work a 12 hour shift on Monday if they feel Idolent..

I don’t like unions today but I do think they made things better in the early 20th century. Anything can be taken too far and spoil it, which is what unions have done.

But, still, Labor Day is about honoring Working Americans. God bless them.

[outofsalt]

If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.

[DoodleBob]

First, a little background. Per Wikipedia, May 1 (an ancient European folk holiday known as May Day) emerged in 1886 as International Workers' Day, in part due to the proximity of the date to the bloody Haymarket affair of May 4, 1886.

Democratic President Grover Cleveland was concerned that a labor holiday on May 1 would tend to become a commemoration of the Haymarket Affair and would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration around the globe. In 1887, he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative.

The date was formally adopted as a United States federal holiday in 1894. Thus, Labor Day is effectively the US' celebration of the sentiments embodied in the world's celebration on May 1...not too cool.

Without turning this into a religion/Catholic kinda thingy, May 1 was established as The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker by Pope Pius XII in 1955 in order to counter communist and socialist appropriation of labor as a social good. Perhaps this sentiment is best explained by Ven. Fulton Sheen:

Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings.

Thus, in the midst of burgers and a day off, for me Labor Day is a day to celebrate the value of work within the context of my vocation as husband/father/lprovider, and not some socialist/communist bastardized view of agitation, hatred, and conflict.