This Monday is Labor Day — that time of year when we fire up the grill for the last hurrah of summer before we close down cabana rentals, pools, and summer-home shore rentals. For parents with children still in school, it’s that time to go broke spending money on school supplies that won’t make it ’til Thanksgiving. And of course, it’s time to take advantage of Labor Day sales! Yeah.
It’s also the time we honor those men and women who labored to make this country great. (Yes, that Trump expression, “Make America great again.”)
New York City was the first place that Labor Day was celebrated — on Sept. 5, 1882. The plans were laid out by the Central Labor Union, which decided that we should honor those workers on the first Monday in September.
The event was so popular that other cities in many industrial centers around the country jumped on the Labor Day bandwagon and celebrated the workingmen’s holiday.
Originally planned as a parade and a salute to the working force, families gathered, waved their flags, walked down main streets across the width and breadth of the land, and then went home to picnics and relaxation.
However America being what it is — the seat of greed — this holiday, like the many others celebrated throughout the year, has morphed into a shopping bonanza where stores offer amazing sales on everything imaginable and stay open extra late so you can get all your shopping in.
Like sharks on a feeding frenzy, shoppers will descend on stores en-masse. Perusing sales circulars (the holy grail for shoppers) as if they contained the secrets of the ages. Worn out and exhausted, the shoppers will wait on long lines just so they can purchase the latest of this or the newest of that at all the bestest, lowest prices. Peak consumerism.
All of this, of course, means more workers laboring harder and longer to keep the stores open.
Not for Nuthin,™ but if Labor Day, the workingman’s holiday, is to honor laborers, how come we make all these people work? So be kind this Labor Day to a laborer — wave a flag, watch a parade, have a picnic, eat a burger, and enjoy the last days of summer.
Do anything, just don’t shop.
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