March 8 is a spring holiday in honor of the beautiful half of humanity – women. However, almost every inhabitant of the planet is aware that there is more than a century of struggle, strength and protection of women’s rights behind this.
Thus, Women’s Day is also the day when we remember the social, political and economic struggles of women around the world.
The agreement on the common date of this holiday was signed in 1921. In this article, we gathered everything about March 8 – legends and meanings, notorious people and the reasons for the day of March 8.
LEGEND no. 1
The most common legend of March 8, widespread in the media today, involves an imaginary fire that broke out on March 8, 1857, in a New York shirt factory called ” Cotton ,” where many workers and they lost their lives.
Legend has it that those women were locked inside the factory to prevent them from participating in the strike and that when the fire started, they could not escape, perishing in the flames.
Many mimosa shrubs grew near that factory, which is why this flower became official for Women’s Day.
Although the story is very moving and tragic, there are no records of this incident: the origin of the legend may have come from another disaster that occurred in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on March 25, 1911, where 146 women – mostly young immigrants – worked in this factory at the time the fire started.
Many of them could not escape because the doors were locked to prevent them from taking unauthorized breaks, so they perished in flames or jumped out of the windows trying to escape.
This incident had a huge effect on the community and over 100,000 people attended the funeral of the victims.
LEGEND no. 2
Other versions of the origins of the March 8 celebration cite the violent police crackdown on an alleged union demonstration of textile workers that took place on March 8, 1857 in New York, while other hypotheses relate to strikes or accidents that had place in Chicago, Boston or New York.
- The official version of the origin of International Women’s Day says that the holiday began to be celebrated after textile workers in New York marched through the city in 1857, protesting against unacceptable working conditions and low wages. However, in those days, the media did not cover this event. Historians later learned that Sunday, March 8, 1857, was a public holiday, so none of the journalists “went to work” to describe the event.
- The above version acquired new interpretations years later. Therefore, a version began to circulate according to which the protesting girls were not workers in the textile industry, but prostitutes who demanded to be paid the salaries of the sailors who used their services, but did not have money to pay.
- A similar demonstration took place again on March 8, 1894 in Paris. This time, women demanded that their rights be recognized equally with women who sew clothes or bake bread and set up special unions. Such protests were repeated in 1895 in Chicago and in 1896 in New York.
- The events took on a political dimension in 1908, when the American Social Democrats unexpectedly supported the aspirations of women on the streets and brought to the streets of New York more than 15,000 women of various professions, including the oldest. The action was carried out under the slogans of reducing the working day, equalizing the salaries of men and giving women the right to vote.
LEGEND no. 3
According to legend and one of the books of the Old Testament, the lover of the Persian king Xerxes, the Jewish sister Hadassah, named Esther, saved the Jewish people from destruction by the beauty and purity of her heart.
Xerxes wanted to destroy all the Jews, but Esther, who burst into the king’s court at the cost of her life, asked the king not to kill the children of Israel.
Queen Esther captivated Xerxes and he not only kept the Jewish people, but also raised the status of all the Jewish confidants in her palace, including Esther’s uncle Mordakai.
This happened on the 13th day of Arda, according to the Jewish calendar (it is the month falls at the end of February – beginning of March).
Praising Esther, the Jews began to celebrate Purim. Over the years, the celebration of this date had slipped, but in 1910 it fell exactly on March 8.
LEGEND no. 4
The legend of March 8 is sometimes linked to the event of the great demonstration that took place in St. Petersburg on March 8, 1917.
This protest, led mainly by women in the capital, called for an end to the war. The weak reaction of the Cossacks, sent to suppress the demonstration, later encouraged the protests that led to the collapse of tsarism.
For this reason, on June 14, 1921, the Second International Conference of Communist Women declared March 8 “International Workers’ Day.”
LEGEND no. 5
Another legend about March 8 tells us that feminists Klara Eissner (Zetkin) and Rosa Luxemburg designed the holiday as a meeting place for women around the world to fight for their rights.
Clara Zetkin is a German politician, activist of the German and international communist movement, one of the founders of the German Communist Party, activist in the fight for women’s rights.
This linked March 8 to the supposedly existing legend that married slaves had to give innocence not to their husbands but to their masters. In the Middle Ages, in many European countries, this right of first night was in force. According to legend, in one village, the marriage of eight girls was scheduled to coincide with the holiday, that is, March 8, and all, by a strange coincidence, were named Martha.
Seven of them, in turn, entered the master’s bedroom, and the eighth refused and was forcibly brought to the castle. As she undressed, Martha grabbed a knife from the folds of her shirt and killed her master. Afterwards, she told her boyfriend everything. The couple ran away, then lived happily ever after. The day of this victory of the Jews is honored and celebrated to this day.
Clara Zetkin recounted this legend in 1910, at a meeting of the Socialists, as an example of a woman’s first challenge against her illegality. And in honor of this girl – the eighth Marta – Clara Zetkin and her friend Rosa Luxemburg proposed to establish the International Women’s Day, in which women from all over the world will organize rallies and processions, attracting the public to their problems.
LEGEND no. 6
Another interesting story about why March 8 was chosen as the date of women’s holiday is this: Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg decided that the number 8 most closely resembles female forms. Therefore, they decided to set a feast on the 8th day.
LEGEND no. 7
The origins of International Women’s Day can also be found in ancient Roman culture, when free women and girls went to the Goddess Vesta for blessing, wore the best clothes and the most expensive jewelry to show favor to the gods, and their husbands and fathers did. small gifts in honor of this holiday.
LEGEND no. 8
Sometimes, an association is made between the snowdrop legend and the 8th of March, where the goddess Flora handed carnival costumes to all the flowers and presented the snowdrop with a white costume. But Snow also wanted to take part in the carnival, even though she was not entitled to an outfit.
Thus, he began to ask the flowers to share his coat. The flowers, fearing the cold, did not respond to the request of the snow, only the snowdrop covered it with his suit.
Since then, snow and snowdrops are inseparable from each other!
By the way, the church not only does not recognize the March 8 women’s holiday, but also considers it satanic, whose ideology contradicts religious canons, according to which a wife should “fear” her husband and abandon feminist ideas.
The church’s rejection of the March 8 holiday is also associated with the denial of its inner content.
Despite all the circumstances of the past, in the modern world, March 8 is a celebration of spring, beauty and love, which offers many smiles to the representatives of the beautiful half of humanity.
So, nowadays, March 8th is an official holiday in more than 25 countries, but it is widely observed in many other countries.
