Traditional May Day origins and celebrations

Greetings on this splendid May Day! At last, winter is behind us...except in Newfoundland where they received another 22 cm of winter blessings overnight! Glad you could join our celebrations. Help yourself to a refreshing mug of coffee and a May Day doughnut. Got your Maypole up yet?

The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian times, with the Floralia, festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, held April 27 during the Roman Republic era, and with the Walpurgis Night celebrations of the Germanic countries. 

It is also associated with the Gaelic Beltane, most commonly held on April 30. The day was a traditional summer holiday in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures. While February 1 was the first day of Spring, May 1 was the first day of summer; hence, the summer solstice on June 25 (now June 21) was Midsummer.

As Europe became Christianized, the pagan holidays lost their religious character and May Day changed into a popular secular celebration. A significant celebration of May Day occurs in Germany where it is one of several days on which St. Walburga, credited with bringing Christianity to Germany, is celebrated. 

The secular versions of May Day, observed in Europe and America, may be best known for their traditions of dancing around the maypole and crowning the Queen of May. Fading in popularity since the late 20th century is the giving of "May baskets," small baskets of sweets or flowers, usually left anonymously on neighbors' doorsteps.

Since the 18th Century, many Roman Catholics have observed May — and May Day — with various May devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary In works of art, school skits, and so forth, Mary's head will often be adorned with flowers in a May crowning. 

May 1 is also one of two feast days of the Catholic patron saint of workers St Joseph the Worker, a carpenter, husband to Mother Mary, and surrogate father of Jesus. Replacing another feast to St. Joseph, this date was chosen by the Pope Pius XII in 1955 to create as a counterpoint to the Communist International Workers Day celebrations on May Day.

Beginning in the late 20th century, many neopagans began reconstructing traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival.

"May Day!" is, of course, also an internationally recognized distress call and may or may not have originated with too much beer and mead being consumed at the first May Day celebration!

See ya, eh!

Bob