May Day/Beltane

As a child growing up in Wisconsin I remember a teacher's aide (a high school student) was helping us out in 1st or 2nd grade and she was graduating soon, so as a sort of final project that she did for us we made May Day baskets.  Making May Day baskets was a common thing we did, I don't know if because Wisconsin is rife with Germanic and Scandinavian culture and lore or if it was just the time in which I grew up...I think a little of both.

Anyway, we made paper cone baskets with a paper handle and filled them with candy (Cherry sours, I remember that clearly) and some little paper trinkets we had made, flowers I think, and I were supposed to give them to our moms.  I used to think May Day was a a sort of Mother's Day and could never understand why we gave presents twice to moms, but it always seemed like we gave May day baskets to our moms.

I asked her one year, finally, what May Say was and I don't really remember everything she told me but I remember she said something about it being a summer festival and that people would go to their neighbors houses, ring the doorbell, and then run after leaving a basket of goodies.  I believe she had done this for neighbors she knew but it was never something we did when I was a kid.  I guess its payment for taking all their candy 6 months later at Halloween (Samhain).

Well, I never understood it and sort of forgot about it growing up but still, in the back of my mind, I always thought there was something special about May 1st.  When I started practicing Paganism I learned it is Beltaine on the Wiccan Wheel of the Year and that in older times, on different calendar's, it was the first day of summer...and still, unoffically, for many people is really the start of summer.  Since it was the beginning of summer June 21 (or somewhere around there) was midsummer...giving to the phrase "midsummer's eve" as in the Shakespeare Play.  When calendars changed June 21 (sometimes 22 or 23) became the first day of summer but the phrase stuck.

I won't go into the details of Beltaine, there are excellent sites explaining it and I will post a link at the end of this, but just wanted to point out one more tidbit of Paganism in America.  Most people still regard May 1st as a special day with parades, store sales, as a holiday, or with special events or will even say "happy May Day" but if asked what it means, they don't really know anymore.  Same goes with "the Ides of March" which simply means "the 15th of March" and is only ominous for one person: Julius Caesar who was told by a seer that he'd die on that day.  Shakespeare's play about Casesar made the phrase "Beware the Ides of March" a household phrase and superstition...but it holds no real meaning.

Beltane  or   May Day

UPDATE:  a few minutes later....After posting this I was posting the next blog about nursery rhymes and paganism which both happen to have hawthorn and May in common.  and, I came across this little tidbit:


"European Bird Cherry (Prunus padus), 25 ft. This small tree resembles our native chokecherry but blooms about two weeks earlier. The cultivar Commutata, called the May Day tree, has large flowers and is often in bloom by May 1."