Yesterday was May Day, a day celebrated by socialists as International Worker’s Day. Long before the socialists hijacked the holiday May Day was one of the most important holidays for European pagan. The Celts celebrated Beltane while Germanic pagans celebrated Walpurgis Night, both on the day we no refer to as May 1st (OK, technically Walpurgis Night is celebrated on May Day eve). With the Christian’s success of hijacking pagan holidays (Halloween, Christmas, Easter, etc.) I guess the socialists decided to it a whirl and International Worker’s Day was born. I find this kind of ironic being Marx advocated atheism and even went so far to refer to religion as the “opium of the people.” Why would followers of an atheist philosophy feel the need to hijack a pagan holiday? Most socialists will tell me that International Worker’s Day commemorates the Haymarket Riots but that happened on May 4th so I find such a claim a little dubious.
Either way I hope you had a great pagan holiday. Spending the day lighting bon fires and dancing around maypoles is far more fun and productive than doing single day boycotts that accomplish nothing because everybody you’re boycotting knows you’ll be back tomorrow. Also, pagan mythology is far more interesting than the history of socialism. You really can’t compare stories about great gods doing battle with text books talking about the exploitive nature of capitalism.