May 1 has been celebrated in various places around the world for thousands of years. While it is not a major holiday in the United States, many a school has appointed a May Queen and has had a traditional May Pole. Old yearbooks and school records often include pictures of the festivities. This celebration gradually petered out after WWII.
May 1 has always had elements of fertility ritual and the rebirth of spring as a central theme. Like many holidays May Day has pagan connections. Perhaps the most well known ritual comes from the Druids and is the festival of Beltane. A new village fire was set, the animals were purified and couples did what couples do in a most celebratory way.
Other sources accredit May Day to ancient rituals in India and Egypt. It stands to reason that all early civilizations celebrated the rites of Spring, crops, and fertility in general.
Enjoy the video. It is different. A special blessing wish for our friend Firedancer on her special day.
More on May Day on Quoth the Raven.
Wikipedia: May Day is synonymous with International Workers’ Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by communists, anarchists, socialists, and activist groups
…Let the winds lift your banners from far lands
With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope….
…Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.
When the World’s Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life—not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.
Walter Crane, The Workers’ Maypole, 1894
for an excellent repository of all things in regard to may day, visit http://www.marxists.org/subject/mayday/index.htm
g.d. america! america’s chickens have come home to roost (jeremiah wright, obama’s pastor in whose pews he sat for 20 years)
Whatever floats your boat, e.
The intent of the thread has nothing to do with International workers and everything to do with the acknowledgement of the ancient ritual of Beltane that evolved into celebration of spring in more modern times.
At least if you are going to pick at me, pick at me for recognizing a pagan event.
Free Family Day at the Hylton Performing Arts Center today until 5 pm. Performances by local school groups. Sponsored by United Bank.
I remember leaving baskets on people’s doorsteps on May Day as child in the midwest. Today it’s just UPS packages thrown behind bushes without even a ring to the doorbell.
Blessed be.
Hooray, hooray, the first of May, outside screwing starts today!
e has been wiping his butt with a cockleburr again! Or perhaps some English toilet paper–both are about the same.
Once upon a time, in Catholic Schools everywhere, May 1st meant May Procession to honor Mary, the mother of Jesus. Get formed up in lines by grade, march around the school then into the church for rosary.
Of course, in the good ole days of the Soviet Union, it was big parade to celebrate the glorius revolution over the polotariate!
Raymond — You may also remember that May Day was also a favorite of our own academic Sovietologists. They were always anxious to see who was and who was not standing near the Soviet leader while all those bigwigs viewed the military parade. Sort of a who’s in favor and who’s not of Soviet political life.