Subsequent to New Zealand celebrating its first Labour Day in October 1890, the country was dubbed "a working man's paradise".
Early Labour Day parades drew massive crowds across the land. Historians say the holiday was originally feted on different days in different regions, which led to the shipping brass complaining that crews were taking excessive holidays by having one Labour Day in one port, then another in their next port. The seafarers' genius was eventually thwarted when the Government aligned the staggered celebrations to the one day, in 1910.
Celebratory parades have in modern times been swapped with a day at the beach, clipping the front lawn or, that most important Kiwi Labour Weekend tradition - tomato husbandry.
As a kid I noted this was a magic weekend where a sacred window was opened by tomato gods for three days in late October.
If plants are heeled in during this fecund time slot, gardeners will be blessed with much fruit. Any day either side of the weekend is forbidden. Today at least for most of us the holiday has all but lost any political nuance. In fact, there's some irony that it's not mandatory (unlike Easter, Anzac and Christmas) for shops to close on the very day that celebrates workers' rights. We can only guess as to what the holiday's founder, carpenter Samuel Parnell (who successfully argued for the eight-hour day) would feel about the tomato symbolising a day he sweated blood to establish.
