Hey look, I like three day weekends as much as the next guy and I know there are some lovely Labor Day Parades out there. But, how stupid a holiday is Labor Day? It’s basically everyone-gets-a-day-off day. Every “President’s Day” — ugh — we complain that nobody takes any time to think about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. On MLK Day, there’s much exhortation to think about his legacy. But, outside a few public radio stations re-runng Studs Terkel interviews, does anyone even bother to pester people to think of the working man? Is there a moments’ reflection on the travails of labor down at the beach? Times have changed. Labor is not the romanticized world-historical force anymore. Never mind that if you want to help the working man, we should have more work in this country, not less.

Now, I’m sure I’ll get some email from some family of Wobblies or some such who every September 4, light a votive candle to Samuel Gompers, play “The Preacher and the Slave” on the old victrola and relive the glory days of factory shutdowns and cracking scab skulls. And, no I’m not saying that there isn’t much in the history of the labor movement folks of a certain ideological persuasion aren’t rightfully proud of. And long past are the days when anyone cared that the root of holiday is “holy.” But Labor Day is a holy day for a faith so dead most of us have forgotten even how to be nostalgic for it.