Origins of May Day (Part One)

As April leaves us, we start the next month off to a good start because it’s May Day, a traditional spring holiday. On this day, people fill little bags of goodies with stuff like popcorn, candy, small stuff like that. Then the bag is dropped off at a family member or friend’s house. I am not sure if this is a tradition but I was taught that when you leave a May basket you should ring the doorbell and leave quickly, kind of like ding dong ditching, but you are leaving a surprise. Then the person who receives the basket wonders who the gift is from because you don’t put your own name on it. This was always thrilling to me because I would always call my friends asking them if they left the candy at my door. Usually I was accurate on my guessing. We celebrate this holiday every year but most people don’t actually know the origin of this spring holiday.



The earliest May Day festival can be dated back to BC period with celebrations of Flora, the roman goddess of flowers. Throughout the years though, many of this celebrations were “Christianized” during Europe’s conversion. Since then a more widely known version of May Day is celebrated in the Americas and in Europe. Now May Day is known for the maypole dance, a folklore dance, and the crowing of Queen of May.



In the beginning May Day was actually a summer holiday because they considered the first day of summer to be May 1. June 21^st, which is our official start of summer, was their mid-summer celebration.



Within each country May Day is celebrated differently. For example in France, people give out Lilies of the Valley as a symbol of springtime to their love ones or friends. In Finland they celebrate the Walpurgis Night, a carnival-style street festival. There is a party outside consisting of a picnic and caps or decorative clothes are worn. “Sima”,special lemonade for lemons, brown sugar and yeast is drunk and doughnuts are eaten. If you were to walk down the street you would see many people particularly students, with balloons and other decorations everywhere.

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