Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Sunday, May 01, 2005
May Day
Does anybody celebrate May Day with flowery rituals any more? May Baskets? May Poles? I recall making May Baskets when I was a kid, but don't know whether anybody makes them nowadays.
There's a very interesting account of May Day customs (and I'm not talking about labor union parades) at Hillman's Hyperlinked and Searchable version of Chambers' Book of Days. Go get a snack and a beverage before you click on those links, because you'll be there for a while.
Apparently May Day celebrations were still popular in the early 1900s in the US, as you can see from these antique postcards.
Even though we had cold, gray, drizzly weather early this morning, I cut a few flowers to bring inside as a tiny little May Day observance.
3 Comments:
Some of us were talking about that this morning. A friend of mine who grew up in Maine said that when he was boy it was the custom to make up baskets of flowers and leave them at a neighbor's door. I don't know his age but I expect that would have been in the early 50's.
I can't recall any May Day festivities in Texas.
The town of Montague, Massachusetts (in the Western, rural part of the state, near the Connecticut River) has a May Day festival with lots of flowers, gaelic dancing, a maypole, etc. They have a photo essay from 2004 at:
http://www.montaguema.net/page.cfm?p=1&c=9
David Pittelli
http://www.woodedpaths.blogspot.com/
My May-basket-making period was in the 1960s in northern Illinois. I seem to recall that many (all?) the neighborhood kids did it. I also seem to recall that there was candy in those baskets, but my mother says we picked violets. She probably remembers better than I do.
It's good to know that folks are still celebrating May Day. Those are very nice pictures from Montague.
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