Historical Tidbits Archives

September 7, 2026October 21, 2026

Picnic & Protest, the Origins of Labor Day

International Workers of the World archives, wikimedia.

May 8, 1882: Peter J. McGuire, at that time the general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners… suggested the first Monday in September for the holiday he had in mind, “as it would come at the most pleasant season of the year, nearly midway between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and would fill a wide gap in the chronology of legal holidays.”

Mr. McGuire’s resolution was adopted and a committee was appointed to plan a demonstration inline with his suggestion of a street parade, “which would publicly show the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations”, to be followed by “a picnic or a festival in some grove.”
Origin & Significance of Labor Day, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1936.

It’s Labor Day weekend, though unless you’ve been a member of the pipefitter’s union or the Wobblies, you may not realize that does not refer to doing household projects before the bad weather starts or going back to work after summer vacation. Labor Day has a very special history in the United States, even though the influence of organized labor is not what it was in 1882 when the holiday was designed. It’s worth a pause to remember why it’s there. What may be more interesting is why it’s then. Choosing an early day in September was a feature, not a bug, of the union organizers, nearly 150 years ago. Well-played, I say.

July 4, 2026October 21, 2026

Patriotism Disagreeable

New York’s Fourth of July Centennial 1876 in front of Madison Square. No Taylor Swift but lots of fireworks. From alamy.

We long for that perfect Fourth of July. Perhaps there was some festival, some county fair, some town picnic you went to as a kid, and you can still remember the crispness of the coating on the corn dog or the smell of the kettle corn.

2015 Capital Fourth with a proper crowd, listening to rollicking music.

The enthusiasm of the band, banging out some Sousa with gusto or even some toe-tapping rock ‘n’ roll, the dusk dropping slowly, sky melting into fireworks which, as a kid, were bright and loud and wondrous. If you were born before 1970, you might even wax nostalgic for the tall ships that glided with so much grandeur and grace into New York Harbor. Even just 11 years ago, the Capital Fourth was mobbed with people of these diverse United States, welcomed to eat the overpriced snow cones in humid Washington and spread out on the National Mall to listen to cannons go off in the “1812 Overture” and whisper to each other, “that’s not about the War of 1812, y’know.”

Oh, the nostalgia of the corn dogs and our tall ships.

May 22, 2026May 23, 2026

Decoration Days

The tradition of roses and the military go back 2000 years to the Romans. Annually, the Memorial Day Flowers Foundation hands out over 120,000 roses and carnations in Arlington National Cemetery (U.S. Army photo by Rachel Larue)

This coming weekend is Memorial Day weekend, officially an observance to honor fallen soldiers but unofficially the beginning of the summer. We have Congress in 1968 to thank for creating the Uniform Holiday Act, which turned many of our solemn, meaningful observances into convenient three-day weekends, perfect for getaways full of clogged traffic leaving town and home improvement projects that I don’t have enough time to finish because I didn’t start until Monday. On the other hand, the garage could use a spruce up…

I’ve never been able to warm up to Memorial Day, and trying to put my finger on it, I think it’s because of the hypocrisy. To the extent that there’s a typical saying besides “Hot Dogs Half OFF!” or “Beach is Open” or “Maybe there’s a frontage road around this mess…,” the speeches come from politicians determined to shape the idea of sacrifice into a battering ram to justify more use of force. It doesn’t help that every single American war in my lifetime has been about the elite in the US sending the have-not soldiers into places we should not be, but of course that’s not the fault of those in uniform, thank you for your service. (Don’t get me wrong; I would rather have a military than the alternative.) It just too often makes me think of those Jackson Browne lyrics:

I want to know who the men in the shadows are,
I want to hear someone asking them why,
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they’re never the ones to fight and to die…
Jackson Browne “Lives in the Balance”

Still, perhaps in penance for not sufficiently appreciating the sacrifice because of politicians’ crocodile tears, I can offer up a little historical journey. Not why America created Memorial Day because all those bot-churned quasi-stories will trace it to the Civil War. Instead, my question is was putting flowers on military graves always a thing? How did other, older cultures used to celebrate their dead? We’re one of the few cultures that only observes this for one day and restricts it to people in the military.

Meanwhile lots of other cultures, historically, set aside time to remember those who passed before us, especially family members.