Labor Day, September 6, 2009. Yes, it marks the end of Summer - and for that we can rightly disdain it, fear it, and try to delay it. But we cannot afford to ignore it, particularly in times like these when an appreciation of its meaning is so important.

Of all the holidays, Labor Day is perhaps the most neglected for so many reasons. It doesn't have the merriment of Christmas, with gifts under the tree and annoying relatives on the couch. It lacks the luster of New Year’s Day, which, like Christmas, has the added benefit of a sidekick "Eve" to prolong the holiday. Nor is there the magic of Halloween, with its costumes and free candy. How can you beat free candy, or the celebrity of its closest cousin – Memorial Day - which comes with political speeches of patriotism and the taste of summer vacations ahead?

So why cheer Labor Day? Because it is a day that most of us can celebrate and relate to. It is a day that cheers the common man and woman for simply getting by. In these trying times, when after a hard day's work the workers of this world fear the delivery of the mail and the ringing of the phone because they only mean bills that cannot be paid and collection calls that cannot be answered, it is time that we all appreciate what we do and understand the true value of it.

Wikipedia tells us that Labor Day originated in 1882 to give the working man a day off. We were supposed to have parades and festivals, celebrating the contribution that each individual laborer made to the social and economic vitality of the world. Today the parades consist primarily of long lines of traffic returning from vacation to go back to school and back to work. The only celebration appears to come from parents eager to have some peace and quiet once the school bell rings and eager for the kickoff of Monday Night Football.

Before you let your kids run out the door with their Harry Potter lunchboxes and Hannah Montana notebooks, before you return to the commute that requires you to pay more each day just to get to a place where you are earning less and less, pause for a moment and celebrate yourself. Each day you endure pressure from all sides simply to make others happy. You likely spend a good majority of your life on tasks that you despise to provide your family with a roof and with food, and perhaps some frivolous entertainment along the way. You do this 365 days a year and owe it to yourself to take just one day and celebrate all you do because if you don't, no one else will. And that is the true meaning of Labor Day.