By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2     

May Day is one of those odd disconnects between the U.S. and the rest of the world. While everyone else is enjoying the day off, the U.S. remains stubbornly at work. Curiously it was the early labor movement in the U.S. protesting against long workdays in the 19th century that invented May Day in its modern clothing; that is the celebration of May 1st as a day of workers rights. In the 20th century May Day was co-opted by the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China. They made May Day an occasion to display military prowess with vast parades of soldiers and weaponry.

May Day is in fact a very ancient holiday with pagan origins. The Romans had called May Day "the day of flowers". A village May Pole was a local tradition still evoked when I was a child growing up in rural England. The older folk remembered a May Pole, festooned with colorful ribbons, set up on the Village green and around which children danced and sang.

The 17th century English Puritans, needless to say, did not approve of May Day. Together with U.S. anti-communists in the 20th century, they deserve some of the blame for the suppression of May Day in North America. The Puritans banned May Day and the May Pole in 1644 during the English Civil War. The New England Puritan settlers did likewise. But when the Stuart Monarchy was restored in England in 1660 so too was the May Pole.

The May Pole in fact was a fitting phallic emblem for the "merry" monarch Charles II. Like some Brazilian football stars he could not keep is pants zipped up for long. King Charles II, however, can never be said to have mistaken a women for a transvestite. His many mistresses became the "founding" mothers of several of the great aristocratic families of England.

The wife of King Charles II was the long suffering Portuguese Princess, Catherine of Bragança. The marriage had brought with it a huge dowry as well as Tangiers and Bombay (now Mumbai). The borough of Queens in New York City is named after Catherine of Bragança. This may also help explain why she is largely forgotten, and most especially in Queens.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper