Labor Day is for the most part a meaningless holiday. That’s fitting really.

    Other holidays, such as Memorial Day with its somber reverence to the country’s fallen soldiers, and Christmas, which some still celebrate as the birth of Jesus Christ, are engrained in the nation’s psyche.

    No so for Labor Day. It is celebrated more as a day of rest and relaxation.

    People don’t march in parades on Labor Day as they do on Veterans Day, and the fireworks of Independence Day and New Year’s Day are absent.

    Labor Day has no historical significance as do the federal holidays dedicated to Christopher Columbus, George Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Families don’t feel the need to gather and feast as they do on the nation’s day of Thanksgiving.

    But Labor Day is one of the most universal of holidays. It is celebrated in more than 80 countries worldwide as Labour Day and is linked with International Workers’ Day.

    In the U.S., unlike most federal holidays later adopted by states and private industry, Labor Day was created first by some states before it was later adopted by Congress in 1894.

    The first Labor Day celebration was on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City at the prompting of the Central Labor Union.

    Oregon was the first state to officially approve legislation to create a Labor day, doing so on Feb. 21, 1887. In less than a decade, more than a dozen states had followed suit.

    Labor Day was created following the Industrial Revolution and the subsequence shift from an agricultural society to one dominated by manufacturing.     In the late 1880s, unions such as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor were beginning to gain a foothold and it was their influence that prompted states to push for a workers’ holiday.

    For employees of that era, Labor Day perhaps held more significance.

    Not that labor, and work performed each day, is any less significant today.

    According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, U.S. workers, on average, work more hours each year than do their counterparts in most other industrialized nations. The Center for Economic Policy and Research found that U.S. workers get less paid time off than any other developed country in the world.

    Americans work hard and there really is no need to find a deeper meaning behind Labor Day. It’s a day off in recognition of those who punch a clock every day.

    We hope you enjoy it.