Labor Day...

           Let us then, be up and doing
           with a heart for any fate;
           Still achieving, still pursuing,
           Learn to Labor and to wait.
             

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The first Monday of September the season changes officially from summer to autumn with “Labor’s Holiday” as Labor Day was known during the Victorian era.  This holiday grew out of organized marches of working men and women during the 1880s to protest the intolerable working conditions in America at that time:  very little pay for brutally long hours, unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and the great wrong of child labor in sweatshops.  In 1894, Labor Day became an official American holiday, and from that time until World War I, it was celebrated with lavish community picnics, grand parades, and oratory.  Everyone took the day off from work and enjoyed the fruits of their labor:  recreation.  Now there’s a thought.  For the last 15 years it seems I’ve worked on Labor Day trying to elevate my labor and skill to a craft…

    Of course, these traditions have long since passed away, and today Labor Day is viewed primarily as the official end to summer.  Vacation is over, the children have already returned back to school or need to get ready to next week and stores begin to display winter clothing.  Once again, it’s back to work.

    I always think of May’s Memorial weekend and September’s Labor Day in terms of potato salad.  In May we have the first heaping bowl of the season and on Labor Day, the last.  Out come and go our white shoes and bags as well because my Mother did it that way, as did her Mother.  Oh, the twig is bent early… 

    One Labor Day pursuit which is interesting is to trace the work history of your family.  If you’re lucky you can begin by interviewing the oldest member of your family (grandparents and great-grandparents) to discover what types of work they and their parents did.  Perhaps several generations back your family worked on a farm, then moved into the city.  You might discover occupations in your family’s past that no longer exist and follow that branch back with fascination and wonder… My Irish Catholic grandfather came over to the U.S. in 1920 and worked as a master electrician at Macy’s for the rest of his life.  How did he learn his trade?   By working at the Belfast shipyard Harland and Wolff during the time the British shipping company White Star Lines was building the Olympic ocean liner in 1911 and her sister, the Titanic in 1912.  Now I would have never known that I had a Titanic connection (and the Titanic has been an abiding passion of mine for years), if I hadn’t been curious.So this Labor Day weekend, an excursion to your family’s past might be a perfect destination….

Comments

[Mary Jane Hurley Brant]

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;"

I adore this poem. Had Longfellow been a woman he might have written "Lives of great women all remind us we can make our lives sublime,"

And, Sarah, if you don't mind me saying, you have more than elevated your labor to a craft because those of us who read your books and writings recognize that your work is not just a dash of skill, it is a labor of love.

[Sarah Ban Breathnach]

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Sarah Ban Breathnach