Happy Holiday!

Today, I woke up to an eerie calm.

Well, that’s not exactly true; I woke up to the whirring of a small fan, as I do every morning. It serves as a white noise generator, ensuring my deep slumber amidst bottle clinkings, dog barkings and other assorted noises.

Today, after turning off my noise generator, my ears tuned in to an eerie calm. There! That’s much more accurate!

The normal traffic of daily life here – the rumble of trams, the chatter of students heading to classes in the nearby university; even the particular growl of well-maintained tires rolling on cobblestoned roads... all were absent.

Under the cloud cover, silence reigned: today is the 1^st of May.

Countries all over the world celebrate this day for a variety of reasons. Some ascribe their observances to International Workers’ Day and may even consider it their nations’ Labour Day.

Others follow more traditional roots: the Greek festival Anthesteria signalled the start of the Spring season; a time of rebirth and fertility. All across Europe and in the UK, typical activities include gathering flowers, wearing traditional costumes and perhaps even conducting special church activities.

Of course, May celebrations feature heavily in South American countries and even in Africa.

In Poland, May 1^st is known as Cursed Soldiers’ Day.

Even if you are only remotely familiar with 20^th Century history, you are most likely aware that Poland and her people suffered greatly at the hands of the Soviets on one side and the Germans on the other.

What is less well-known is that the Poles did not take all of that lying down.

Toward the end of the Second World War, staunch souls subverted Soviet and Nazi rule by forming an ‘underground’: a network of communications and sabotage units working against the communist and Soviet regimes that lasted well into the 1950s.

They launched military-style attacks against Soviet state security offices, detention centers (read: prisons) and concentration camps while being hunted down by Soviets determined to bring them to their end.

Not the end of the organizations; the end of those individuals’ lives.

The NKVD agents had their work cut out for them. At the height of Polish resistance to communist rule, there were no fewer than 8 major groups operating across the country. There is no exact tally of the actual number of such groups, large or small; suffice to say that the people native to this country did their very best to retard or outright thwart any Soviet progress.

So, as select towns in Great Britain hoist their maypole and dance around it, as western Europeans pick flowers and conduct rites to celebrate the arrival of Spring, in Poland, people commemorate that day by taking the day off.

Cursed Soldiers’ Day is the unofficial designation. Officially, May 1^st in Poland is Labor Day and, like so many other countries, the working public enjoys either an abbreviated work day or the entire day free from official labor.

Plenty of people here labor inofficially – with no wages being paid, not undocumented workers.

For example, the buzz of lawn mowers echoes across the city. Our early spring brought out carpets of dandelions; looking down on our yard from my lofty position 75 feet off the ground (yes, I measured it!), our lawn looked gold rather than green.

The two elderly gentlemen that maintain our building spent their Labor Day mowing and raking, much to the dismay of the feral cats that prowl our yard, and much to my amusement.

Isn’t lawn mowing the traditional activity of homeowners everywhere across America on Labor Day?

The more important celebration here, the one that caused every building to be adorned with a flag, is Constitution Day, which takes place on May 3^rd.

The Polish Constitution, the first of its kind in all of Europe, is the second-oldest in the world. It was drafted on May 3^rd, 1791 – a mere 15 years after the American document was ratified.

The remarkable fact is that Polish Enlightenment lagged behind Europe because its commonwealth was in crisis and its upper class was not firmly cemented in the socio-political arena.

Philosophers and scientists in Poland had no time to make great, intuitive leaps like Descartes and Newton did; they were too busy trying to survive!

So how did Poland manage a feat that other, more forward-thinking nations couldn’t get their heads around?

Whereas western European monarchies’ rule was absolute, the Polish king had very little power; the country was governed by a parliament that, oddly enough, advocated for what amounted to anarchy – the near-total elimination of the rule of law.

Seeking a balance between the excesses of French and Spanish monarchs and the ineffectiveness of the commonwealth’s king, Poland strove to establish itself as a constitutional monarchy. Those efforts came to naught: civil war erupted and Lithuania, its commonwealth neighbor, rose up in arms as well.

Nevertheless, in the course of these doings, Poland did draft the world’s second-oldest constitution and managed another remarkable feat: they established the world’s first ministry of education that, ultimately, other nations would strive to emulate.

So, how to the people here celebrate Constitution Day besides hanging flags everywhere?    

Warsaw likely saw greater patriotic displays than this burg I dwell in. A parade, surely; concerts and other public events, naturally.

Picnics in the park and outdoors activities in general feature prominently, all across the country. Having strolled around the parks in my neighborhood, I can attest to the fact that those green spaces were well-attended indeed!

This year, the celebration known as Majówka (pronounced my-oof-ka) – the Labor Day / Constitution Day combo coincides with the weekend, making the occasion stretch to a full five days. Thus, some have taken to the roads.  

Sadly, high winds yanked our building’s flag off of its pole; we are left with a bare stick protruding from the façade.

Those same winds kept me off of a bike, too. That’s almost as sad as losing our flag.