Happy May Day

Today is May Day. Even though spring officially begins in March, today is the day that celebrates the height of spring, a day of spring festivities and celebrations. It is also a day to honor laborers.

Like many of our modern holidays, May Day has its roots in ancient, pagan celebrations.

Beginning in the third century B.C. in Rome, the festival Floralia, for the goddess Flora, was held in the days around May Day, April 28th to May 3rd. Flora was a goddess of flowers and fertility, and the festival was held to please her so that she protected flowers and other blossoming plants. There was a circus and theater performances, there were prostitutes and naked dancers, and a sacrifice to the goddess. Deer and goats were let loose to symbolize fertility, and beans and lupines were scattered for the same reason. Romans usually wore white tunics, but during Floralia, they got to wear bright colors.

In the Celtic British Isles, May Day was celebrated as the festival of Beltane, or Bealtaine or Bealtuinn — Bel was the Celtic god of light, and taine or tuinne meant fire. It was the summer half of the year — a time when the sun set later, when the earth and animals were fertile. Beltane lasted from sundown the night before to sundown on the first of May. On the eve of Beltane, people lit bonfires to Bel to call back the sun. People jumped over the fires to purify themselves, and they blessed their animals by taking them between bonfires before leading them to their summer pastures the next day. It was a day to walk around the property lines and assess your land for the summer season, to mend fences. Women washed their faces with the spring dew so that they would stay beautiful, and there was dancing, tournaments, parades, feasting, and general revelry. There were lots of flowers — men walked around the fires with rowan branches to keep evil spirits at bay, and May trees, or Maypoles, were set up covered in rowan or hawthorn flowers as a blessing. People danced around the Maypole, seen to be a phallic symbol to promote fertility, and villages would compete with each other to see who could produce the tallest maypole. Young couples went off into the forest to spend the night together and came back the next day with flowers to spread through the village. A young woman was crowned May Queen, and she would ride naked on horseback through the village.

Many of these celebrations continued as late as the 17th century — the Puritans were not too pleased, especially since so many young women went off into the woods and came back pregnant. Maypoles were made illegal in 1644.

Since the Puritans discouraged May Day, it was never a major holiday in America. In the late 19^th century, May Day was chosen as the date for International Workers’ Day by the Socialists and Communists of the Second International to commemorate those who were hanged after the Haymarket Square riot, which occurred in Chicago in early May of 1886. WA