Name: Why Is Labor Day a Thing? - A Cowboy Explains
Uploaded: 2019-11-01T09:09:46.000Z
Duration: 3 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Summers ending, and well before there was HBO telling us that winter is coming, Labor Day's been reminding us all along that fall is also afoot.

So sit back, grab a cold one, and get in a position to digest all that grilled meat you've been shoving down your gullet.

Because I'm about to tell you the story of Labor Day.

You probably don't know that Labor Day is supposed to be a celebration of labor unions.

And it currently ranks as our fourth favorite celebration of unions behind spaghetti and meatballs, ladies and tramps, and any relationship Jennifer Aniston's in.

Some say it's not even a real holiday. It's just a day off created by the picnic table industry to remind us that they are the reason salads can still be made of jello.

My mom considers Labor Day to be the 29 hours she spent given birth to the biggest head that doctor had ever seen.

Some countries call it May Day, which to me just seems noncommittal.

Canada has Labor Day, but they spell it with a U.

Any good American knows that there is no I in team, and there should be no U in labor.

Some think PC culture has gotten so out of control that you're not even allowed to be white after Labor Day.

That's misinformation. It's okay to be white.

You're just not allowed to do it while looking like a douche bag.

To be honest, I'm not sure anyone really knows why you can't wear white after Labor Day.

Some historians think it might've been rules made by old money people to differentiate themselves from new money people, which brings us back to the whole douche bag thing.

You may not know, but it wasn't always a three-day weekend.

When Labor Day started, there were no weekends.

The work week was 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and the only way your week ended involved at casket and a religious ceremony.

So how did this celebration of labor unions turn into what is basically an excuse to pair a bottle of Rosé with a T-bone steak?

Probably the same way the celebration of the wedding union turned into television's "The Bachelorette."

The first Labor Day in 1882 was actually a work strike, and that day off felt so good that they thought, "we've got to do this more often."

Kids this Labor Day will have to go to bed early since school has started up, but on that first Labor Day, kids had to go to bed early because work started up at the mines, or as they called it in the 1800s, second grade.

I'm sure it would make the workers back then proud as they fought the Pullman rail company to pay them livable wages.

That one day there would be the added bonus of terrific deals on patio furniture.

We've come a long way from the time when people fought for Labor Day because they barely had room to cook, sleep, or use the restroom.

Our grills and mattresses are priced to sell, and our potties are poured out.

And maybe nobody remembers the squalor that sparked the Pullman strike, but we will remember that Bill Pullman was in the movie "Independence Day."

And to be fair, most of you all think Labor Day is just a sequel to that holiday anyway.

Fact is, lots of things have changed for the better since Labor Day was made a national holiday by Grover Cleveland, who I was surprised learn is a U.S. President, not a regional Sesame Street character.

But a couple of things will never change.

The first, a lot of you all will never be able to tell the difference between Labor Day and Memorial Day.

And the second thing that will never change, Bill Pullman.

Happy Labor Day, America, but especially, Bill Pullman.