I’m a day late with this so I’ll backdate it: Feliz Dia da Mãe to all Portuguese mothers, and Feliz Dia Do Trabalhador to all members of the Classe Operária (Portuguese working class)
If you’re both a mother and a labourer, make sure the people in your household bake you two cakes because you’ve earned it.
I was talking to m’wife this morning about May Day and how we don’t really register it as a big deal here apart from having a bank holiday and an excuse to sit in the garden (weather allowing) reading and drinking. If we think about it hard enough we might remember that there’s a socialist celebration known as May Day which happens to fall roughly on the same date as the older, pagan May Day festival, but there isn’t usually a lot of fuss about it. We don’t drive tanks down Pall Mall like the Soviets would have, and Hallmark don’t sell Tony Benn greetings cards or Hallowe’en-style costumes depicting the Spectre of Communism haunting Europe. It does seem to be a bigger deal on Portugal though, with its socialist tradition, dating back to the resistance to the Novo Estado. In fact, according to this tweet from the Assembleia da República, almost the first thing the revolutionaries did after overthrowing the Fascists on April 25th was to give themselves a holiday a few days later. Nice!
Luso 