We began this morning with a conversation about May Day when we were kids. Rhonda remembers leaving flowers on her neighbor’s door, knocking and running. I remember making the paper cone for crepe paper flowers with a pipe cleaner hanger on it, vividly in fact: it was purple, and my grade school mind thought it was a masterpiece.
So what is/was May Day? After a lengthy 8 ish second scan of Wikipedia, I learned that like many holidays and celebrations, it began a very long time ago. Dating back to 2nd century AD. Now, I’m paraphrasing here, and it’s probably not 100% historically accurate.
Just bear with me…
It’s a tale as old as time: Romans knew how to throw a party! Community leaders set aside enough supplies to throw a month-long shindig, there was dancing, theater shows, and debauchery! All to celebrate Floralia, the festival of Flora. Once they were done with their orgies, goat releases, and throwing beans at each other (not kidding) they concluded with competitive events and a sacrifice to Flora. Gotta celebrate Spring somehow, right?
My favorite celebration is in Gaelic culture; they celebrated Beltane which translates to lucky fire. Don’t get ahead of me, this isn’t like Shireen Baratheon, it’s much less heartbreaking. At the start of the summer season, farmers would use fire when moving cattle from winter to summer pastures. And when I say “use” I mean they made their cows jump over fire to protect their milk from being stolen by fairies. You read that right. Fairies.
You fight those fairies!! (SPN humor)
All was fine and good untill the 18th century when the Catholic Church made it a church thing. I don’t have a problem with church per se, I have a problem dividing humans into different groups who hate each other. Plus, they took all the debauchery away! Thirty days of fun turns into a two day feasts for St. Joseph the Worker, Jesus’ mama’s husband. No hate here, except this morphed into a communist celebration called International Workers Day.
Church messed up the fun, then it was finally tame enough for the communist.
Most recently, there’s dancing around the Maypole; beautiful when it works out- a disaster in the hands of 4th grade jerks who just use their ribbon to tie each other to the pole. Magnificent paper baskets with crepe paper daffodils hung on front doors until the next rain.
What’s May Day to me this year? 48th day in quarantine. The 47th meal eaten at our dinner table.
I hate this goddamn table. Thank the universe for liquor.
Cheers!
