Here comes May, my favorite month of the year. Trees and flowers are blooming, the smell of clean, fresh, bright green grass fills the air, the birds sing in the warm sun and the days are on their way to their June endlessness.

Too bad my favorite month of the year always starts with the communist celebrations of První máj. I remember them well from my school years. All of us kids, our parents, our aunts and uncles, their friends and their friends’ friends, the whole entire population had to stop their lives and “voluntarily” and “gleefully” go take part in the staged communist parades to carry propaganda banners and wave silly little flags in the celebration of the wonders of life in socialism.

The communist regime plagued Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989. The damage it left behind consisted of 205 486 wrongful convictions, 248 political executions, 4500 prison deaths, 327 border killings and 170 938 emigrations. I find it absurd that 17 years after the fall of the totalitarian regime in this country, the communist party ranks number three in popularity (and therefore power) and thousands continue to gather at the annual celebrations on May First. Can’t you people at least move your parties to February and leave this day to Mácha?