May Day all but forgotten

Owen, my friend, this is for you.

Before I lament America’s lost appreciation for May Day, with its lovely Maypoles, flowers, and white-garbed, beribboned maidens, I must confess: Until my neighbor, then an adorable little boy of only three years, brought it back to me, I too had forgotten.

I came home on that May 1 to find a homemade paper holder, gaily decorated with toddler scribbles, holding two tulips plucked from his garden. Apparently, young Owen Ward thought “that nice lady” could use a flower. Thus began an enduring friendship, anchored by about 100 Monopoly games.

Like so many modern holidays both revered and forgotten, May Day has pagan roots among the ancient Celts. For Druids May 1, or the festival of Beltane, was one of the two most important holidays which divided their year in half. (Samhain is the other, connected with Halloween).

As you might guess, May Day is about spring, but before May flowers there were — nope, not showers. Fires. Celts lit fires signifying spring’s burgeoning sun — a purifying force to burn away the old and bring forth the new. They drove cattle through those “life-giving” fires (hopefully, very quickly!). Men walked their sweethearts through the smoke, hoping for visions of their future.

When Romans arrived on the British Isles, their traditions added to the mix. The Roman five-day festival devoted to Flora, goddess of flowers and fertility, included a tree symbolizing fertility and vitality, around which the revelers danced.

Sound familiar? By the Middle Ages, every English village had its Maypole. Bringing in the year’s Maypole from the woods was a big occasion, filled with merrymaking. Children danced around them, wrapping the tree in violets and colorful ribbons

France also loved the Maypole, taking it to new heights. The May Tree became the “Tree of Liberty,” a symbol of the French Revolution. A few years later, revolutionaries in America and Italy followed suit with their own trees of liberty (in the U.S., poplars).

Maypole revelries suffered a serious setback under Puritan rule in the 17th century, where virtually all celebration — and darned near everything fun — was frowned upon. Those Puritan ways emigrated to America, and while their views eventually lost prominence, May Day never fully recovered.

However you commemorate, step outside on this May Day and pause for a moment’s reflective respite under the renewing rays of spring’s fickle sun.

And thank you, Owen, for bringing May Day back to me.

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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at sholeh@cdapress.com.