For summer is a-come in,

and winter’s gone away.

All in the merry morning

that is the month of May.

— From May Day, by Christina Rossetti

When I was a child, my mother taught my sisters and me to roll colored construction paper into cones, staple braided crepe paper handles to them, and place a few candies in each one. Every May 1st, we were then sent forth into our neighborhood with them. 

Our mission was to hang our offerings on the door handles of our friends, ring the doorbell and run. Under no circumstances were we to be seen. This was our version of May baskets.

Needless to say, we fooled no one, even before the days of camera doorbells. I always felt a little silly doing this, because we were the only ones who participated in this strange custom. I’m not entirely sure why we did it. Perhaps because her parents were born in the 1880s, when May Day was A Thing. Or perhaps she’d heard tales from her grandfather, who had immigrated from England, where May Day was Quite a Big Thing. 

In America, girls from grade school to high school might be crowned as a May Queen, and be-ribboned maypoles would be set up for children to dance around. May baskets were made and distributed (theoretically anonymously) to friends and neighbors. Gardens would be planted, and bouquets of flowers picked to bring into the house. 

This bringing in the May — fetching flowers and green branches from woods and fields, was an ancient custom across northern Europe from Russia to  Ireland. What a relief it must have been to throw open the doors to sunlight and pleasant fresh air after spending winter inside, huddled in smoky air from the fire. 

Germans had Walpurgisnacht on April 30-May 1, with animals and people passing through fires for good luck. Once upon a time the fires were sacred, and passing through them was thought to be a blessing from pestilence and witchcraft for the next year. 

Sacred fires played a part in rural Irish celebrations as well, for similar reasons.  The Catholic church had replaced the Celtic festival of Beltane with May Day, but the fires, the branches and flowers over doorways and windows, remained. Rural Irish might make a May bush as well by decorating a thorn bush with garlands of flowers or ribbons. The local church would choose a May Queen, as in ‘well, aren’t you the queen of the May’. 

By the Victorian era, May Queen in Ireland, England, or America were intended to be girls and young women of good character, dressed in white and crowned with blossoms to represent purity and the promise of spring. Human nature being what is, I expect this was mostly a popularity contest — hopefully the ‘queen’ was popular because of kindness to her fellow students. 

Elizabethan John Stowe wrote in 1598 that in London, the population “did fetch in May-poles, with divers warlike shows, with good archers, morris dancers, and other devices, for pastime all the day long; and toward the evening they had stage plays, and bonfires in the streets.”

That sounds like quite the street festival! If my childhood had had something like that on May Day, I probably wouldn’t have felt so foolish. 

Still . . . I think I’m going to pick up some paper and make a few May baskets. 

How is May Day celebrated in your part of the world?  Let me know in the comments — I love learning about new (to me) customs.