Happy 1st of May–otherwise known as May Day, or International Workers’ Day. May Day has long been celebrated as a spring holiday, with the most famous related celebrations including dancing around a May Pole or giving baskets of flowers to friends. While it’s not usually as large a celebration, many people still think of the first of May as a marker of the beginning of spring.
But May Day has become more than that. While most of us in the United States think of Labor Day (the holiday for celebrating the average working men and women) as the last gasp of summer in September, many countries celebrate their workers on May 1.
And finally, you’ve probably heard of “Mayday!” as the official radio cry for help. It comes from the French, “M’aidez!” (Help me!), and is used internationally in emergencies.
So here’s to May Day, and here are some books to help you celebrate:
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Outstanding Book for the College Bound). In this now-classic dystopian story, a Christian theocracy has been set up in the former United States. Women are completely disenfranchised, and the protagonist, “Offred,” is a handmaid, a fertile woman assigned to an upperclass family for the sole purpose of bearing children. As the story unfolds, we learn that there is a resistance movement, called “Mayday.” Will Offred join the resistance? Will she even survive?
Mayday by Jonathan Friesen. This one has nothing to do with either holiday, or with radio cries for help, but with the title, I had to include it, right? And the first of May does play an important part of the story. Crow has sacrificed her life to protect her sister, Adele, from someone evil–but it didn’t work. She has the chance to return to her past, but only if she goes in someone else’s body. The outsider’s perspective forces Crow to re-evaluate what really happened. Continue reading May Day!