Our Blog - Fete de Travail

I was reading an article in La Depeche (a French newspaper) today entitled "Savez-vous d’où vient la fête du 1er mai", which translates to "Do you know where the May Day party comes from?" In France, the 1st of May (called the la fête du travail) has been a paid national holiday since 1947. But it actually dates back in 1886 to the United States, during a general strike of American employees. On May 1st, 1886, a group of 400,000 American workers held a general strike in Chicago, demanding an 8-hour work day. Just 3 years later, France adopted May 1st as "international workers day" and in 1919, the 8-hour workday was ratified.

The other point of May 1st is a tradition of giving "Muguet" or Lily of the Valley. All over town, you have people selling sprigs of Muguet (we bought 2 sprigs from the Red Cross). The tradition dates back to Charles IX, back to 1560. Legend has it that Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de Medici, were traveling and a knight offered the young king a sprig of Muguet from his garden. This charmed the young king so much that he started offering a sprig of Muguet each spring to the ladies of the court. The tradition spread across France but then was lost for awhile. It wasn't until the early 1900's that the Muguet got associated with the Fête du Travail and then the sale of Muguet on the streets started in Nantes in 1932. A few numbers ... 60 million springs of Muguet are sold each year in France with 85% of the production coming from the Nantes area. In France, there is a tradition that a strand of lily of the valley with 13 bells would bring happiness.

There are a few things open today ... the markets were open this morning (at least, Cristal and Victor Hugo), as well as Starbucks and Burger King (but not Brueggers it seems). Most of our normal Tea salons are closed today, but we found one that is open that our normal Tuesday English-speaking group.

There is also the parade. We made our way to Rue du Metz last year for the start of the Fête du Travail parade, and this year we only went down to the metro Jean Jaures area, which is about halfway through the parade route (which then ends at Place Arnaud Bernard, near our apartment. I took a few pictures ... it was a very "mild" parade with just lots of people, including their kids, walking rather slowing around. There was quite a police presence (including riot gear) around ... blocking streets and following the end of the parade. Here it was pretty mild, compared to Paris, where there were "hooligans" that caused a lot of damage including destroying a McDonalds.