We all need more reasons to celebrate! 

May Day recently passed and Cinco de Mayo is just two days away. We should be ready. These two celebrations are both important days… maybe…?

I had no idea what either meant but I knew that I had put flowers on doors as a child (May Day) and had heard that we should party hard when it was the fifth of May in college (Cinco de Mayo). So, it was time to figure out why they were/are important. Turns out that neither of them are important but both are a bit interesting.

The actual reasons we celebrate are related to the fact that we simply want something to celebrate. May Day goes back to the days before Christ and has to do with the British celebrating the spring weather - not sure of all the details and they didn’t begin to hold my interest. Cinco de Mayo, in similar actuality, has nothing to do with the Mexican day of independence as commonly believed, but instead some war that was waged centuries ago.

I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about these “holidays.” For the few children left in the country who put flowers on door handles, that is great for them. And for the millions of college kids who need a reason to do something on the fifth of May each year… well, that is their business too. And I think I finally figured out something I had been curious about for most of my life - something which involved obscure “holidays.” I had wondered why we had some of the celebrations we do. Turns out that…

We all need more reasons to celebrate!