Greetings Lighthouse Inc., Church Family,

We hope that you are enjoying this Labor Day holiday.  May God Bless all hands that work with rest.

Labor Day is the one day of the year no one expects to work! We celebrate work by not doing any work. But it replicates our week. We labor, and then we rest.

On Labor Day, we honor the value of labor by putting it out of our thoughts for an extra-long weekend. Work is an activity we esteem most when we’re not doing it. In a period of unemployment, for example, work seems like the grandest and most longed-for opportunity of all.  Work is therefore a blessed endeavor. Whether it’s baking a casserole or doing laundry; serving customers or compiling a report; teaching a class or making a hospital bed: Our daily labors earn our daily bread and more.

Labor Day has its roots in the labor union movement, particularly the eight-hour day movement. This movement advocated for a standard eight-hour workday, with eight hours for rest and eight hours for recreation. The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on September 5, 1882, in New York City.  In the U.S., the first Labor Day parade was on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September a legal national holiday every year.

The first Labor Day celebrations were parades to show the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by festivals designed for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. Speeches by prominent union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics, and government officials were among the day’s highlights.

Labor Day is to celebrate you, the American worker! It was envisioned by the founders to honor the American worker, the driving engine behind the most productive economy in the world, and the American work ethic that resulted in one of the highest standards of living in the world. All of this came out of a belief in economic and political democracy.

Blessings,

The Lighthouse Inc., Church