Two Dates the World Shares

Look at a calendar from almost any country and you'll see two busy weeks: the start of May, and the end of October into the first days of November. The countries are far apart. The reasons are not the same.

In much of Europe, the first of May is a spring festival that is many centuries old. People went out into the fields, and later they kept the day off. In many countries the same date became a day for workers, after events in Chicago in 1886. In Britain there's a bank holiday on the first Monday in May. In Japan, the first week of May holds several separate holidays together, and people call it Golden Week.

Then the year turns. In France, Spain, Poland and Italy, the first of November is a public holiday, and families visit the graves of their parents and grandparents with flowers. Roads are busy that week, because people travel home. In Mexico, the same days are for the dead too, but the mood is different: music, food, photographs. In Ireland and the United States, the night before is Halloween.

So: two dates that a great many countries share, for reasons that almost none of them share.