Celebrate Labor Day with Some Fun Facts ~ Jean C. Gordon

Labor Day pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers and is traditionally observed in the US on the first Monday in September with parties and street parades. Labor Day weekend also symbolizes the end of summer for many Americans. But there's more about Labor Day you may or may not know.

• Labour (Labor) day originated in Canada in 1872 when a parade was held in Toronto in support of the Toronto Typographical Union's strike for a 58-hour work week.

• The first U.S. Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882 in New York City, planned by the Central Labor Union. About 10,000 workers took unpaid leave and marched from City Hall past Union Square uptown to 42nd street, and ended in Wendel’s Elm Park at 92nd Street and 9th Avenue for a concert, speeches, and a picnic.

• Oregon was the first state to declare Labor Day an official holiday in 1887, followed by Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York in the same year

• By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1994, Congress passed an act that President Grover Cleveland signed into law, making the first Monday in September of each year the official Labor Day Holiday.

• Labor Day is considered the unofficial NFL season kickoff.  99.44 percent of the time, the NFL plays its first official season game the Thursday after Labor Day. As an aside, my Buffalo Bills are scheduled to play the Jets on the following Saturday, 9/13.

• The first Waffle house opened on Labor Day 1955, in Avondale Estates, GA.

• Labor Day is the unofficial end of hot dog season. According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Americans eat some seven billion hot dogs.

• You can wear white after Labor Day. The old tradition goes back to the late Victorian ere, when it was a fashion faux pas to wear white clothing after summer officially ended on Labor Day. According to Emily Post: White indicated you were still in vacation mode at your summer cottage.

In my upcoming new release, Sweet Tidings, the citizens of Indigo Bay are celebrating Christmas, not Labor Day. Come join them in Sweet Tidings and the five other Indigo Bay Christmas Romances.

Amanda Strickland wants her first Christmas as mayor of Indigo Bay to be a civic success from the animal shelter fundraiser to benefit gala to the traditional tree lighting. And movie-star acquaintance Eric Slade may be just the ingredient she needs to pull it all off.

Eric wants to put the paparazzi off him and the young co-star of his last film—and protect his fragile relationship with the grown son he never spent much time with when his son was growing up. When he proposes a pretend holiday romance between him and Amanda, it seems like a win-win for them both.

But what will happen when the pretend romance turns real and snafus on both sides threaten to crush their Christmas plans and hearts?

Sweet Tidings is the first book in the new Indigo Bay Christmas Romances Series, but it and the other stories are standalone and can be read in any order. 

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