Loyalty Day in May has been an officially recognized American holiday since 1921 yet you would be very hard pressed to find an American citizen who has ever heard of it. It is a nationally recognized holiday but it is not a federal holiday so no one gets off from work that day which is probably why no one really knows it exists. Loyalty Day in May is celebrated in some communities in the United States with parades and carnivals but the celebrations are so few that many Americans are unaware of them. Loyalty Day in May is possibly the best example of the paranoia that can arise when a democracy feels threatened by some form of government that they fundamentally disagree with. Loyalty Day in May has been officially reaffirmed by every United States president since 1921 and the purpose of Loyalty Day in May is very much centered around the United States federal government. Loyalty Day in May is a day when all Americans are supposed to pledge their loyalty to the United States and reaffirm their civic devotion to the United States government and everything the United States stands for. It almost sounds very communist in its origins and when you consider how and why Loyalty Day in May was started you begin to understand why saying it has communist origins is not far off from the truth. Saying it has origins in paranoia is not far from the truth as well.

May 1st has always been considered a day for the worker throughout the world. It is referred to as May Day or Labour Day all over the world and while many countries do celebrate Labour Day on May 1st it did get its beginnings in communist Russia. It is because of these communist origins that the United States has always refused to celebrate Labour Day on May 1st with the rest of the world opting instead to celebrate American Labor Day on the first Monday in September. To offset the rest of the entire world’s celebration of communist Labour Day on May 1st the United States government started what they called Americanization Day in 1921. It was never widely celebrated but yet in 1958 the United States Congress officially declared Loyalty Day in May to be an American holiday and president Dwight D. Eisenhower declared that the first Loyalty Day in May on May 1, 1959 to be the first officially recognized celebration of Loyalty Day in the United States.

To look at the timing of the first officially recognized Loyalty Day in May in and of itself is to really lose sight of the bigger picture. From the early 1940’s to the late 1950’s in the United States there was something called the Second Red Scare going on and it was basically an irrational paranoia and fear that communists were attempting to take over the United States. Of course these fears had their basis in the new cold war that had just started with the Soviet Union and throughout the course of this modern day witch hunt many innocent people were persecuted and sent to prison on false charges. Public figures were randomly ruined with very public charges of being communist and many times these charges were made without any basis in fact and the person was never able to regain their career. This is the climate that was swirling around the United States when Dwight Eisenhower officially made Loyalty Day a holiday in the United States and it is that irrational fear, and possibly the current day embarrassment of that fear, that prevents Loyalty Day in May from ever being a widely celebrated holiday.