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Posted by Katrien Vander Straeten Apr 28, 2006 |
Mayday mayday mayday!
This signal for radio-telephone communications was invented in 1923 by Frederick Stanley Mockford. He was looking for an easily recognized distress signal, and as a British radio officer at Croydon Airport in London, which was in frequent contact with the Paris airport, he thought to base the new word, "mayday," on the French for m'aider, which means "help me".
So, mayday mayday mayday. Help me help me help me... on May Day! Yes, the first day of May.
Both ancient and modern cultures have known May Day to be an important celebratory day.
Ancient societies from the Celtic Druids to the Romans to the medievals recognized the astronomical, meteorological, agricultural, and simply natural significance of
the first day of May. But we no longer live in an agricultural society. Most of us work with people, paper and computers, not with plants. We rarely wonder where our vegetables and meats come from. Even the work on farms is no longer so totally dependent on the natural cycle of the seasons. In winter we heat our houses to summer temperature; in summer we cool them to almost freezing! We are disconnected from nature. Except for a difference between the gruff communal temper in the dead of winter and the general elevation of our mood when the first day of spring surprises us, we no longer know what spring really means. (There are exceptions: gardeners, naturalists, and those who have a religious or spiritual stake in nature.)
But the modern, global industrial society has appropriated May 1 as International Workers' Day or the International Labor Day. This appropriation has nothing to do with the old meaning of May Day: it was just coincidence that the historical events it commemorates happened on May 1 (1886). But in a way it is fitting: it is now a salutation, a paying of respect to, not of the work of nature, but of the work of man's own hands.
So why my distress call? Here in the United States, May Day is neither a political nor a seasonal celebration. It is not a holiday. The American political "May Day" was moved to September 1, called "Labor Day", which is just another holiday with picnics, barbeques, one last road trip before school starts, and, more often than not, shopping. On neither day, May 1 or September 1, is there a respectful memorial for work that is done for us all around us. I think that's a pity.
Do with it what you will. I am celebrating both May Days!
Read this week's articles: May Day: Celebration of Labor and May Day: Celebration of Spring.