By Community Correspondent Angelika Mohr

The May Bank Holiday has been a recognised public holiday in the UK since the Bank Holiday Act of 1871. It is the Monday following the first of May and traditionally the only bank holiday in school term time.

The name bank holiday comes from the fact that on those days, banks were customarily closed and thus no trading could take place. Today, May Day has also become International Worker’s Day and Labour Day.

May Day has been celebrated since pre-Christian times. The Romans celebrated the festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers at this time, which marked the beginning of summer; as did the Gaelic festival Beltane, also celebrated on May 1st. The traditional Germanic festival Walpurgis Night was ‘Christianised’ by early Christianity, to become the day of St. Walpurga, an English missionary to the Frankish empire born in Devon in circa 710AD. In England, May Day is traditionally celebrated with Morris dancing, dancing around the maypole and crowning a May Queen. Today, May Day is a public holiday in over 80 countries.

Labour Day, celebrated in the USA, remembers the strike action that began on the first of May 1886, when 19th century workers demanded an 8-hour working day. The protests were followed by the Haymarket massacre on the 4th of May 1886, when an unknown demonstrator threw a bomb at Chicago police, who tried to disperse marchers on Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The police opened fire following the explosion and eight police men and an unknown number of civilians were killed. Since then, the first of May has become a day of processions, protests and speeches, during which labour activists and trade unionists benefit from special attention from the media.

Before 1834, around 33 saints’ days and religious festivals were observed by the Bank of England. These were then reduced to just four; 1 May, 1 November, Good Friday and Christmas Day. In 1871, the Bank Holiday Act was passed by politician and banker John Lubbock, which identified Easter Monday, Whit Monday, First Monday in August and Boxing Day as official bank holidays. He did not include Good Friday and Christmas Day, as these two dates were recognised as common law holidays in England.

A century later, with the Banking and Financial Dealings Act of 1971, the current regulations for bank holidays were passed in the UK. As part of the act, Whit Monday was replaced by the Late Spring Bank Holiday. It was not until later, that New Year’s Day and May Day were introduced officially as bank holidays.

So, after all that confusion, these are the bank holidays we can look forward to in England and Wales in 2010 and 2011: New Year’s, Good Friday (22 April 2011), Easter Monday (25 April 2011), May Day (2 May 2011), Spring Bank Holiday (31 May 2010 and 30 May 2011), Summer Bank Holiday (2 August 2010 and 1 August 2011), Christmas Day and Boxing Day.