Bonfires were burning in Slovenia long before we started celebrating Labor Day at the end of the 19th century. We lit bonfires on Easter, horse racing and bonfire night. So how did the tradition spread to May 1?
On April 30, the eve of Labor Day, bonfires are lit all over Slovenia. The custom is already so rooted in the national identity of Slovenians that we rarely ask ourselves why we light the May Day bonfire and what its meaning is.
As the professor of ethnology and cultural anthropology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana said in an interview for N1, which will be published tomorrow Rajko Muršičthe bonfire was not originally associated with Labor Day, but it somehow belonged to that time.
The celebrations on the first of May have traditionally intersected with certain celebrations and customs from the spring period, such as Easter, hunting and bonfire night. Thus, in Slovenia at the end of the 19th century, among other things, the tradition of lighting a bonfire, which is lit today on the eve of the holiday, began to take hold. “The tradition of bonfires for the first of May quickly caught on, as people sang and had fun by the fire,” said Muršič.
The tallest bonfire in the world, 43 meters and 44 centimeters high, was built by the locals of Boštanje in the municipality of Sevnica on April 30, 2007, and thus entered the Guinness Book of Records.
The well-established practices for the first of May, i.e., in addition to lighting a bonfire, also setting up a new year’s day, are typical of this calendar time, and they could become popular because they offered an excellent framework for spontaneous manifestations and entertainment, added Muršič.
International Labor Day has been celebrated since 1890, when the Congress of the Second International (an organization of socialist and workers’ parties) in Paris recommended this day as a workers’ holiday a year earlier. May Day is a symbol of the international solidarity of all workers and is a reminder of the events that took place in early May 1886 in Chicago. At that time, the workers demanded the implementation of the eight-hour working day and other rights, but were hindered by the police. 13 protesters and seven police officers died. On Slovenian soil, Labor Day has been celebrated since 1890, and since 1948 it has been legalized as a national holiday.
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