Theologian's Almanac for Week of May 1, 2022
Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking — specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life.
For the week of Sunday, May 1:
May 1st is May Day, a date with a host of holidays in its history. The Celts of the British Isles considered it the day that divided the year in half, between light and dark, with May Day marking the return of life and fertility. Ancient Romans devoted the day to celebrating Flora, the goddess of flowers. And in the mid-nineteenth century, the international movement for workers’ rights — including the movement for the eight-hour work day — claimed May 1st as Labor Day. After the 1894 Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland officially moved Labor Day to September in order to disassociate it from May Day’s historic connections to the rights of workers. Today May 1st is still a day of rallies and protest in many parts of the world, and in 2006, May Day demonstrations returned to the United States, calling attention to the rights of immigrants.
May 3 is Eid al-Fitr, the day Muslims mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan, a celebration of having completed the month-long fast, often conceived as a divine reward of feasting and festivity. There are about 3.5 million Muslims in the United States today, making it the country’s third largest religion.
May 5 is Cinco de Mayo, commemorating not Mexico’s Independence Day, as is often mistakenly thought, but rather the unlikely victory of an outmatched Mexican fighting force over France in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. France went on to win the larger conflict, occupying Mexico for a few years — but the earlier battle became a point of Mexican pride and a symbol of resistance against colonial aggression. In the 1960s, Mexican-Americans activists claimed the day in the context of the Civil Rights Movement. And in the 1980s, beer companies heavily commercialized the holiday in the United States, coming under criticism for promoting racial stereotypes along the way. Many today call for a recovery of Cinco de Mayo’s roots in anticolonial resistance, civil rights, and social justice.
May 5 is also the birthday of Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, born in Copenhagen in 1813. Largely unknown outside of Denmark during his own time, his work was rediscovered in the twentieth century, and has widely influenced not only theology and philosophy, but also psychology, literature, and literary criticism. Here’s a taste of Kierkegaard’s lively, provocative, often ironic style:
“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?
“Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”