Editorial: On Labor Day, we look forward to football, festivals and fall temps

Editor's note: This newspaper has published this editorial, with variations, on previous holidays. For those of us who live in south Louisiana, the arrival of another Labor Day tomorrow prompts a good bit of self-congratulation. We know, with relief and no small amount of pride, that we've survived another summer in a place where the mercury rises each May and stubbornly stays there, like a cat stuck in a tree. Summer doesn't officially end until later this month — and both the hot weather and the risk of dangerous tropical weather linger for weeks after that — but Labor Day is the notch we informally place in the calendar to tell us a season has turned. It's early autumn now, no matter what the purists might say. If our fellow Americans up north can claim some measure of their ancestors' pioneer spirit by making it through frozen winters each year, then Labor Day is our time to brag. We've stared down one more summer yet somehow prevailed. And autumn in Louisiana means a lot of things — most notably the return of football. You'll find us gathering at weekend tailgates, rooting for our favorite teams and participating in time-honored traditions that are the hallmarks of fandom. It's also the start of our fall festival season, in which we celebrate the bounties of the land and waters of the state we love — from crawfish to pecans to cochon de lait. Labor Day is a way station between the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and it was put on the calendar precisely for that reason. In 1882, Peter J. McGuire, the founder and general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, suggested setting aside one day to honor America's laborers. He saw room in the calendar between July and November, and thought the holiday would, in his words, "fill a gap in the chronology of legal holidays." McGuire was a native of New York, but his gift for sensing an unmet need for celebration seems like a Louisiana way of looking at the world, doesn't it? He would probably have felt at home here. New Yorkers observed the first Labor Day in 1882, and it became a federal holiday in 1894 after President Grover Cleveland signed it into law. Getting an extra day off was a big deal for workers back then, as a young labor movement struggled to achieve what many Americans broadly enjoy today: a 40-hour workweek and formalized vacation policies. Today, who is included under the mantle of the working class is the subject of much debate. But Americans have always valued hard work and enjoying the fruits of our own labor. The best gift of Labor Day, for those fortunate enough to have it off, is the day itself — a few spare hours to spend as we like before autumn begins in earnest.