May 5, 2026: Rewriting History, One Holiday at a Time

The USA has a way of renaming and repurposing holidays and other significant days to fit political agendas.  Today on VoR, we talked first about 2 such holidays:  Cinco de Mayo, today's holiday, and Mothers Day, two holidays reshaped and don't resemble their original intent.  Cinco de Mayo celebrates a 1862 Mexican victory over France in the first Battle of Puebla.  It was a first test of Mexico's recent independence and instilled a sense of national unity and patriotism in the fledgling country.  Columbia, CA first celebrated the day in 1862 and by the 1980s, the beer, wine, tequila, and mezcal companies turned Cinco de Mayo into a day to partake of Mexican spirits, but leaving the purpose of national pride and patriotism behind.   

Mothers Day met a similar.  First introduced by Julia Ward Howe, writer of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, who tended to wounded soldiers during the Civil War, issued the Mothers Day Proclamation in 1870 calling for a day to promote peace and disarmament, not the day for flowers and gifts promoted by Anna Jarvis.  The capitalists and militarists won the day and it is Anna Jarvis' day that we celebrate by the early 1900s.   

The bigger issue is the rewriting and repurposing our history to fit political, militaristic and capitalist agendas.  Isn't it time we learned the true history?  

Thanks go out to the RJ Reynolds Band for sending me their sone, Emma Goldman, which I played on air, and to Marc Thomas, a Savannahian writer of poems of resistance.  I was proud to read his "What Is To Be Done" poem to start the show.  A beautiful show and one of Albert's favorite sayings.

Next week, we hope to offer a recently recorded show as we all (is that southern for all of us?) have other obligations) or a recently aired one.  We'll be back live on May 19.   Sip a mezcal for me!