1 May
Labour Day

The annual celebration of this day was decided by the founding congress of the Second International in Paris in 1889, in memory of the 1886 workers’ protest in Chicago, which was violently broken up. The American workers had been demonstrating for an eight-hour working day.

In solidarity with them, workers protested on 1 May 1890, and from that point on, this day became an internationally observed annual workers’ holiday.

In Hungary, the day was first celebrated in 1890 as well, and it also became a day for the political demands of the working class to be demonstrated through rallies and protests. During the First World War, its celebration was banned, but in 1919, the government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic officially commemorated it. After the First World War, it became a public holiday in several countries, including Hungary after 1945.

Initially, workers demonstrated their support for the “people’s democratic state power” by parading before party and state leaders. Nowadays, the day is dominated more by family-friendly “popular festivities.” In 2004, Hungary became a full member of the European Union on this day.

Numerous ancient folk traditions connected to fertility are also associated with the day (such as erecting the Maypole). On 1 May, young men would go into the forest and choose a tall, leafy, branched tree, which they would place beneath the window of the girl whom one of their group was courting.

When the tree began to dry out, it would be “danced out,” meaning that when it was cut down, a small dance celebration would take place.