Merchants' Day
In my diary for today, 25 May, is a mysterious entry: “Merchants’ Day”. I have no idea when or from where this reminder came. But it struck me as a red-letter day worth celebrating. After all, merchants of many kinds have had a pretty tough time of it over the last year.
So to find out what Merchants’ Day was all about, I turned, naturally to Mr Google. Or is it Mrs, Ms or Mz Google. Let’s just say Dr Google, which is gender free. Or does that sound too elitist. Anyway, I, er, got on the internet.
I thought I’d struck paydirt straight away when I alighted on a page from Chapman University, where my friend and fellow economist Mark Skousen teaches. He’s the author of a book on Smith and Keynes and the Austrians and an enthusiast for the General Output measure of economic benefit. “Third annual merchant’s day sees record turn out” said the heading. Sure, it was from 2019, but then things have been pretty odd over the last 18 months so maybe there wasn’t a 2020 one.
It looked promising. Local businesses apparently line the piazza, giving out free samples and offering games and prizes (even a surfboard, among those) to the students. Looks jolly and helps the students to get engaged with and support the local business community. The sun shone, and it seems everyone had a good time. The dark cloud for me, though, was that this was on 18 September, not 25 May.
Next I found a site advertising (at least, I think it was advertising) “[Game Even] The Merchants Day!” “Wanna be a RockStar in Trading?!” it asked. “So, what’s the problem buddy?” “Are you a well-known Trader? This event is for you then,” it continued. I’m not, and it advised me that “midnight is your last chance,” so I thought I’d best move on.
Moving on, I found another link between “Merchant” and “25 May” on Wikipedia. But it turned out only that the Indian-born film producer and director Ismail Merchant (he of Merchant Ivory) died on that day in 2005. Ah, well.
Another promising find was for “Merchant Day [singular], also known as Trader’s Day” [also singular, but with a “ ‘ ” for some reason]. This, I was advised, “was a holiday on many Human worlds celebrating merchants, traders,” [this is looking good!] “and space explorers.” Oh, not what I had in mind. Interesting to know that traditional families that celebrated Merchants Day [which somehow seems to have become plural again] abstained from eating dinner in reference to the low food supplies that many merchants endured during their travels, and I know the feeling. But I seem to have alighted on a Star Wars fan site rather than anything exactly ... real. Nor did this Merchants Day seem much allied to 25 May. Well, May the Fourth be with you.
Maybe someone out there knows what Merchants Day really is. But I certainly think some sort of Merchants’ Day [grammar!] should be celebrated as a recognition of the staggering benefits that are brought to us by millions of individuals, buying and selling goods and services, freely and voluntarily, in competitive markets. Without their resilience and adaptability in difficult and changing circumstances — think shops, supermarkets, private schools, Amazon and other delivery companies — we would not have been able to continue daily life through the Covid lockdowns. While so much of the public sector — NHS family doctors, state school teachers, civil servants — just concluded that things were all too difficult and replaced customer service with queues and waiting lists, merchants kept us going. With things at last opening up, this day as much as any other seems a good day to raise a toast to them.