I have often thought that the holiday we celebrate today is named incorrectly because it sounds like just the opposite of what the intention is. The truth is that this holiday truly was initiated to protest unfair and unsafe working conditions for adults and even young children toward the end of the 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution. There were many violent events in different cities that led to the idea of a “workingmen’s holiday” until Congress passed an act making Labor Day a law, signed by President Grover Cleveland on June 28, 1894.
Many of us have memories of history lessons in high school where names and terms like Eugene Debs, the Pullman Railway strike, or the Haymarket Riot of 1886 strike a chord. The story is often not as clear as the title, however, and the struggle for fairness practices overlooked as we eat our picnic foods and celebrate the end of the summer vacation season.
This year is different. There should be no large gatherings in parks or on beaches. We cannot celebrate in the same way because businesses are closing down and many more people find themselves unemployed by the day. The situation will not change until the virus which is ravaging the world is conquered. That will not happen until all people come to understand that we are each responsible for the health of all of us. Our “work” now is to care enough for the whole to discipline ourselves, to follow the instructions set out by health officials while waiting for a vaccine to be conceived and approved to end the pandemic.
My prayer for this day is that we will all come to recognize that this “work” is necessarily shared by all of us and it will be a united effort or we will fail. I am reminded of a song. We know it. It goes like this:
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of…
It’s shockingly late as I turn to this task today (9:28AM in the Eastern part of the country). There is a gentle rain falling and quiet all around. It must be that something in me has already leaned in to a consciousness of Labor Day weekend. It seems illogical to call it the end of summer, since date-wise and temperature-wise we are far from finished with what we define as the summer season. It is, however, the moment when the school calendar resumes and takes precedence over every other way of marking the passage of time. With school back in session for youth of every age, we all fall into step with the round of activities that qualify as “work” – or labor, to be exact. So we should call this coming Monday NON-Labor Day and recognize the need for taking a breath in the work-a-day world, giving thanks for all those workers who contribute to our wellbeing.
I often think that “Labor Day” must be a confusing holiday for people who are not native to our country or anywhere else that it is celebrated at some point in the year. Some of us have taken to calling it “Non-labor Day” since it is, after all, a day when everyone but essential workers stay home or go on picnics or celebrate in other such ways a “day off” from work.
I’ve often been in conversations where the topic is the naming of this holiday. Some of us think it should be called “Non-labor Day” since mostly all workers who are not absolutely necessary (like hospital emergency room personnel) are usually free of going to work today. With this in mind I turned to Thomas Merton who actually has a fair number of thoughts on the subject of work. I came upon a paragraph in which he looks at work in a different, more elevated way. I thought it a good sharing for today and with it I pray my hopes for a safe and restful, rejuvenating day for everyone, working or not.