Holidays, Parades and National Celebrations

While these blogs are about my journey this spring, they're also a reflection on events as they occur. As Memorial Day approaches, it seems appropriate to meditate a moment on national holidays. We Americans celebrate Memorial Day as the beginning of summer for the most part, often forgetting that it once was called Decoration Day and that it had its beginnings in the Civil War. Meant as a memorial to our fallen soldiers, it's been extended to visiting the graves of relatives and friends but, usually, it means a long May weekend.

It's a long weekend here in France too because, while only marginally Catholic, the French close up shop for fériés (holy days) and May 21 was Ascension Thursday. Like us, they're really enjoying the nice weather and here in Provence, wine festivals this weekend will be rampant. Next weekend, they'll do it all again for Pentecost and why not? Life needs lots of excuses to step back from the everyday and to meditate a bit, relax a bit more, and honor and celebrate according to inclination and belief.

The last month has been filled with these occasions in my travels, starting with Cuba. We were in Havana for May Day with a huge worker's parade, flags, and, naturally, rum. Of course, we had to go.

You don't go and line up for this parade. There are no floats or marching bands, just masses and masses of people, waving flags and carring banners, marching with others from their places of work and celebrating just that--being workers.

What we, as Americans didn't know until our local guide told us, was that May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, evolved from a Chicago labor event called the Haymarket Massacre where a dozen strikers were killed by police bullets. We now have our Labor Day in September, mostly the other holiday bookend to the summer season, but Cubans turn out en masse to parade through Revolution Square.

We went too. It seemed an opportunity not to be missed. We lined up with the workers from our hotel and marched along. Somewhere, in a review stand, many, many workers away from us, Raul Castro watched us all walk by. Rum was passed, flags were waved, and then it was over. A parade for everyone. The flags stayed with us though, sometimes draped from buildings or filling a huge square.




Once I arrived in Mollans, briefly, before leaving for Corsica, I came across another parade. This one was small, with townfolk following a procession of children and flag bearers to the town's war memorial. The date: May 8 when the Nazi surrender of World War II took place. No one worried that the parade was ragged; it was all in the thought.



Small speeches from the kids and then slightly longer adult versions reminded the crowd how monumental it was for the French to regain their country when the Nazis fell. Flowers went on the town's physical monument to their fallen war heros and and then the whole thing was over. Everyone went home for lunch and life went forward.

It made me pause and does again this holiday weekend to think how important "country" is to all of us--Cuban, French or American--and how we all need to be proud to be our respective nation's citizens. And yet, what a coincidence that all these flags being waved are the same colors: blue, white and red. So over this long holiday, think of how much we're all the same, have a hot dog, Cuban sandwich, or a croque monsieur, and appreciate your life, your work, and the land we've been given.