MAY 1ST. May 1st is one of those dates when the little story joins the big one. A look back at the origin, meaning and traditions of Labor Day, starting with lily of the valley…
Employees and workers of France, rejoice! May Day falls on a Monday in 2023, finally making it possible to extend the weekend, whereas May Day fell on a Sunday last year and a Saturday the year before. Labor Day, celebrated since the interwar period in France and became a public holiday in the 1940s, is the fruit of a long history. It is often forgotten, but it is also an international event, this particular date first commemorating the strike of 350,000 American workers in 1886 to demand an 8-hour working day, which would lead to the famous riots from Chicago.
May 1 will officially become “Labour Day” in France under the Vichy regime. Marshal Philippe Pétain preferred to baptize it “Labour and Social Concord Day”, a name resonating with the infamous “Work, Family, Fatherland” and supposed to make people forget the “International Workers’ Day” established by the Socialist International in memory mobilization of 1886. The red rosehip flower, which was a symbol of May Day from 1891, worn by activists and trade unionists, then gave way to lily of the valley, an ancient custom that Marshal Pétain brought up to date.
The tradition of treating yourself to a bit of “lucky” lily of the valley every May 1st has a very distant past. During the period of ancient Rome, the Florales – festivals given in honor of the goddess of flowers Flora – honored the lily of the valley, then shared in quantity. As for the Celts, they celebrated its flowering before the start of summer. In France, the tradition dates back to the Renaissance period of Charles IX who, on May 1, 1561, decided to offer lily of the valley every May 1 to the ladies of the court. A tradition that was picked up at La Belle Epoque by Christian Dior and other famous fashion designers who offered lily of the valley to their employees…
Everything seems to have started in the Middle Ages, with the arrival of this Japanese flower on the European continent. Lily of the valleys, another short name for lily of the valley, has long symbolized the season of spring. Over the years, the plant has taken an increasingly important place in the collective imagination at the time of May 1st. And it was on May Day that the well-known tradition of lily of the valley was truly born:
May 1, Labor Day, has its origins in the history of the working world. The starting point is Saturday, May 1, 1886. On that day, in Chicago, a protest movement for the 8-hour day was launched by the American unions, then in full development. A strike, followed by 400,000 employees, paralyzes many factories.
The date of May 1 is not chosen at random: it is the “moving day”, the day when traditionally, American companies make the calculations of their accounting year. The movement continued and on May 4, during a demonstration, a bomb was thrown at the police who responded. Result: about ten dead, including 7 police officers. This will be followed by the death sentence of five anarchists.
Three years later, the congress of the Second Socialist International, meeting in Paris for the centenary of the French Revolution, decided to make May 1 an “international workers’ day” with the aim of imposing an eight-hour day. This date was chosen in memory of the Chicago May Day Movement of 1886.
As early as 1890, demonstrators sported a red triangle symbolizing their triple demand: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of leisure. This mark was gradually replaced by a wild rose flower in 1891, when a demonstration in Fourmies, in the north of France, degenerated, with the police firing on the crowd. That day, a young woman carrying a wild rose is killed. This flower becomes the symbol of May 1st (the lily of the valley will not return until later).
May 1 has been a special day in France since 1919. While in the United States the demand for an 8-hour day in the world of work was quickly heard following the strike movement of May 1, 1886, in France , it took nearly 30 years for French workers to be heard.
On April 23, 1919, the Senate ratified the law establishing the eight-hour day. Exceptionally, to celebrate this progress, the High Assembly declared May 1, 1919 a non-working day. In the years that followed, May Day gradually established itself as a working-class meeting, a day of processions.
The demonstrations of May 1, 1936 left a lasting mark on the French imagination. The day takes place between the two rounds of the legislative elections. On May 3, 1936, the coalition of the left (SFIO, PCF, radicals and various left) won the election: it was the beginning of the period of power of the Popular Front. Chaired by the socialist Léon Blum, this government wasted no time in adopting historic measures for workers, the 40-hour week, the first two weeks of paid vacation or the recognition of the right to organize.
It was the Vichy regime that officially declared May 1st a public holiday. With this measure, Marshal Pétain and his Minister of Labor, René Belin – a former prominent member of the socialist wing of the CGT converted to the National Revolution – try to obtain the support of the workers. The day, instituted on April 24, 1941, is named: “Day of Labor and Social Concord”. An appellation that underlines Vichy’s desire to unite employers and workers in a corporatist spirit and to put an end to the class struggle.
It is the Vichy regime and only it which, in the history of France, will officially designate May 1 as “Labor Day”. The term is not taken up later by the government of the Liberation. In April 1947, the government that emerged after the Liberation confirmed that May 1 would remain a paid public holiday. May 1 is thus recognized in law 47-778 of April 30, 1947 and officially becomes a public holiday in law 48-746 of April 29, 1948.
Labor Day will nevertheless retain its international character. Today, it is celebrated on a non-working day in most European countries, with the exception of Switzerland and the Netherlands. May Day is also celebrated in South Africa, Latin America, Russia and Japan. In the United Kingdom, the first Monday in May is celebrated. In the United States, “Labor Day” is celebrated on the first Monday of September. This day of tribute to the labor movement was born in 1887, at the request of the unions, after the Chicago massacre. But, at the request of US President Grover Cleveland, it was not set for May 1 so as not to recall this dramatic moment.
Even before the advent of the working class or the celebration of lily of the valley, May Day was a date of rituals. For the Celts, this date marked the festival of Beltaine: it marked the transition from the dark season to the light season, the resumption of hunting, of war. This “rebirth” is linked to Belenos (incarnation in light of the god Lug).
According to the texts, druids lit fires, responsible for symbolically protecting livestock from epidemics. This festival was therefore opposed to Samain – ancestor of our All Saints Day – which marked the return to darkness. Traces of these practices remain on Walpurgis night, a Christianized pagan celebration: great fires were lit in Germany, Sweden or central Europe.
Spirits are omnipresent in these traditions. In Moselle-est and Lower Alsace, we speak of “witches’ night” (Hexennacht, in Platt, the Frankish Lorraine). The children patrolled in the evening – twenty years ago – in order to steal all the objects found in the gardens to group them in the center of the village, suggesting a supernatural intervention.
Today, the main trace of these celebrations is the Maypole – the Maibaum – particularly present in southern Germany. In the villages of Bavaria, Swabia or the Rhineland, the tradition is to erect a wooden mast decorated with a weather vane or coats of arms. This is an opportunity to organize festivities sprinkled with the sound of brass bands. One of the attractions of the festival consists in stealing the tree from the neighboring village overnight.
May Day has also over the years become a day of rallying for the far right, wishing to pay homage to Joan of Arc. The feast of Joan of Arc was traditionally organized on May 8, since it is estimated that it was on this day, in 1429, that she participated in the liberation of Orléans from the English. The Action française, a royalist group to which were added far-right elements, used the event for political purposes between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
The tradition will be taken up by the National Front at the end of the 1970s and moved to May Day in 1988. That year, Jean-Marie Le Pen hopes to take advantage of the gathering of activists from his party to influence the second round of the presidential election, held on May 8. This modification also allowed the party to distinguish itself from other far-right groups, which continued to organize their own march in May.
Today, the National Rally of Marine Le Pen seems to have abandoned this tradition. Jean-Marie le Pen continues to lay a wreath at the foot of the statue of Joan of Arc, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris…
