Loyalty Day was created in the year 2003, which makes Loyalty Day one of the most recently established secular holidays in the United States.  Loyalty Day is a fairly controversial holiday and only time will tell if Loyalty Day is here to stay or if Loyalty Day is a passing trend that will eventually be forgotten.  President George Walker Bush established Loyalty Day as a day when all modern Americans should renew their commitment to the ideals of America.  The official idea behind Loyalty Day is that celebrating Loyalty Day encourages patriotism and devotion to the spirit of bravery and freedom that made America the nation it is today.

However, when Loyalty Day was first suggested, there was a flurry of controversy about this topic in many magazines and newspapers, as well as in many internet blogs and on many websites.  This controversy rose again when the holiday was made official by the congress.  Many columnists who appear on the editorial pages of newspapers pointed to Loyalty Day as a disheartening sign of the times, and there are many people who feel very strongly that Loyalty Day is not a valid or necessary holiday.

One of the reasons why Loyalty Day is so controversial is that Loyalty Day is on the first of May, which is traditionally the holiday of May Day.  May Day is a secular celebration of the beauties of nature, and it encourages people to welcome the onset of the warm and pleasant spring season with open and joyful hearts.  This popular holiday has been celebrated for hundreds of years all around the world, and there are many beloved traditions associated with May Day such as weaving ribbons around a maypole and having large outdoor picnics that help communities bond.  These traditions have been in place for centuries, so it makes a lot of sense that there would be plenty of resistance to changing what kinds of celebrations and events take place on the first day of the month of May.

Because May Day is so popular and beloved, it is no easy task to get people to change their holiday plans to include the tenets of Loyalty Day.  Loyalty Day conjures up a much more somber and serious atmosphere than May Day, as it is more about fierce determination and courage than it is about celebration and joy.  This shift in what the holiday of May first is about accounts for a lot of the resistance to Loyalty Day, and that resistance is not entirely unfounded.

One thing that both sides of the argument are likely to agree upon is that the first of May is a great opportunity to imagine what kind of future you would like to see.  You can choose to celebrate May Day and dance in the great outdoors as people have done for centuries, or you can opt to acknowledge Loyalty Day and reaffirm your commitment to fighting for the ideals of America.  Whichever choice you make, the time you spend thinking about how you want to spend your day is sure to help you find valuable insight about your personal priorities and about your worldview, so perhaps this controversy over Loyalty Day will prove to have a positive outcome in the long run as it asks people to consider these important issues in a very tangible way.