Thru the Year: May Day

Considering that we hardly pay it any mind, May Day has a pretty interesting history, associated through the ages with an ancient Celtic festival, a medieval holiday, a Catholic ritual, and the modern labor movement. Plenty of room for exploration, education and fun.

May Day began as an ancient Celtic holiday called Beltane (or some variation like Beltain, Beltaine, or Bealtaine). Named for the Sun God (Bel, Belenos, Baal), it celebrated fertility, sexuality, greenery, flowers, new beginnings, and an end to harsh winter living.

Bonfires were lit to honor Bel and used to re-light hearth fires, purify cows, burn old floor rushes and mattress straw, and clear fields for planting. Celtic celebrants decorated their houses with flowers and leaves (“bringing in the May”), danced around trees, pursued sexual partners, and enjoyed fresh foods that were not salted or dried.

Though the Celts spread across Europe, as History points out, they exerted the most enduring influence on the British Isles. When the Romans arrived in Britain, they brought their own spring observances — most prominently a five-day shindig devoted to the goddess of flowers that (as ThoughtCo describes) included games, sex, dancing, and scattering beans.

Over time, Roman play merged with Celtic practices and by the Middle Ages had more or less formed the May Day celebration. Villagers cut down a tree from the surrounding woods and set it up in the square. Young people danced around the tree-pole – perhaps for joy that spring had arrived, or in supplication for a good harvest, or in hopes of finding a mate, or for some other reason. These dances became more elaborate (and artistic) when ribbons were added to the pole.

Meanwhile, in the late Middle Ages, the Catholic Church, known for adopting ancient celebrations and infusing them with Christian meaning, declared May the Month of Mary Mother of God. This may have been a way to tamp down the general May Day carousing, or it may just have made sense: May already contained a number of feast days honoring Mary (for example, Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament on May 13; and the Visitation on May 31).

Later on, events called May Crownings (placing flowers on a statue of Mary, accompanied by prayer and music) became popular in Catholic churches. These events often occur on or around May Day and are usually carried out by children (sometimes in connection with their First Communion).

Americans were never much for Maypoles, what with the English colonies growing just as the Puritans were discontinuing May Day (and Christmas!). During the Victorian era, though, “May Basket Day” became popular. Handmade baskets filled with flowers were secretly hung from the doorknobs of friends and neighbors. (The most fun was to hang the basket, ring the doorbell, and run away).

Louisa May Alcott describes exactly that in an 1880 book called Jack and Jill.

The job now in hand was May baskets, for it was the custom of the children to hang them on the doors of their friends the night before May-day; and the girls had agreed to supply baskets if the boys would hunt for flowers, much the harder task of the two.

Chapter XVIII. “May Baskets.” Read online at Project Gutenberg

Let’s wrap up May Day with a final event that also dates to the late 1800s but has nothing to do with flowers or fertility. Back when Labor Unions actually fought for workers, the AFL and Knights of Labor came together to demand an 8-hour workday. The practice, they declared would begin May 1 1886; accordingly, 300,000 workers went on strike.

These workers paid dearly for a condition we take for granted today, especially during a strike in Haymarket Square, Chicago. The event seems familiar: Police advancing to break up an otherwise peaceful crowd, an anonymous bomb thrown, and in the end, 8 civilians/7 policemen dead, and seven men sentenced to hang. Eventually, the workers’ demands were met and many countries still honor workers on May Day – though we Americans generally hold those celebrations on the first Monday in September: Labor Day.

Speaking of Labor, the medieval “Labor of the Month” for May is Falconry – hunting with a trained bird of prey (technically, a falcon). While other months feature more pedestrian activities like killing pigs and pressing wine, falconry was strictly for the upper classes. In fact, according to Trinity College UK, by the end of the Middle Ages, hunting with falcons was less about finding food and more about fashionable, flirty parties.

Which explains the second aristocratic “labor” for May: Courting. If they weren’t chasing harts, Renaissance nobles were chasing hearts (yeah, I said it) . That was called “a-maying” and while I can’t find when the word first emerged, there’s general agreement that it means to frolic with romantic (or at least sexual) intent.

“Lusty,” is how a modern Queen Guenevere puts it when she encourages her knights and ladies to go “blissfully astray” at the Camelot May Day gambol.

So it seems that even our favorite courtiers engaged in May Day celebrations.

Which brings us back to the May Day Maypole fertility fun and ritual.

Anyway, Happy May Day.

HomeSchool Go2 Postscript
What Can You Do with this info?

Do your own research on Beltane or the Celts

According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac Beltaine fell on a “cross quarter day,” halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. Find out what these terms mean

Revel in the “clean start” of Beltane: Clean the garage, oil the garden tools, de-clutter books, videos and toys; make a donation

Search out some Beltane recipes using fresh herbs and early spring greens like leaks and spinach. You could also try your hand at traditional oatcakes

Whether from the beginning, or as a later embellishment, in Ireland, fairies were part of the May Day merriment. Leaving little cakes to please the fairies was one way of ensuring their good will throughout the growing season. Find out more about this aspect of Beltaine. Try making fairy cakes using a cake mix and one of those tiny-muffin pans. (Or you could follow a recipe)

Read Alcott’s story (above link to Gutenberg) and summarize it or compare it to another of her books

Surprise the neighbors with a May Basket made from a paper cone, paper plate or recycled paper

Learn more about the Haymarket Riot. Alternatively, find three different articles and compare how the information is presented and how the workers, police, and event itself is described and characterized

From the middle ages to modern times, the Arthur legends have been told and re-told many times. The story of Queen Guenevere a-maying appears in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (1485) — which can be downloaded or streamed at the Internet Archive

View Camelot. It’s available as a movie, or you can look on YouTube for the original Broadway cast version –including “The Lusty Month of May” performed by the incomparable Julie Andrews

Lerner & Loewe’s musical is based on T H White’s The Once and Future King. If you haven’t yet read it, treat yourself