Happy Labor Day

In the US, Labor Day is a federal holiday recognizing the American worker (paid labor, of course) and is conveniently placed at the first weekend in September, to mark the official end of summer each year. Children go back to school, and you can invite a few friends over because it is too late to go anywhere. Stop feeling guilty about missing vacation this year and begin hopeful plans for next summer.

Elsewhere the holiday is celebrated at the first of May and is not so much about relaxing as it is a political expression. As a Homemaker, it is easy to empathize with the plight of underpaid and overworked labor – but somehow this holiday, because of it’s name, never brought those struggles to my mind.

Labor, with a capital L – is what I think of. That Great Work, in fact the only work capable of earning the women of ancient Sparta a gravestone if she, like a warrior bringing life instead of death, died in her noble effort. Each month of fertile life offers many women a cramping reminder, foreshadowing an unknown fate in childbirthing.

It has been jokingly speculated that if the labor of childbearing were divided between the parents, she would bare the first, and he the second – then neither would ask the other to do that again. It doesn’t work that way in reality.

In his pivotal work, “The White Goddess” Robert Graves presents the idea that it is this magical ability of women to bring new life, with its monthly foreshadowing and the culminating relentless ordeal of delivery, that inspired men to begin their own initiation ceremonies. Mother Nature herself initiates the women, so men had to prove they could “pass the test”, too.  Women, he claims, did not need to undergo a man-made initiation ritual because of the regular and natural changes suffered during menses and childbirthing.

It is an interesting thought, but that was a very, very long time ago. Times have changed, and the modern world in many ways has lost that social structure surrounding initiations of any sort.  Still, we have a holiday named to honor workers. In many places it is a day of solidarity. No matter when you celebrate it, the word “Labor” itself reminds us of our Mothers and foremothers, ancestors and mitochondrial keepers and the work they did for each of us. Happy Labor Day, indeed.