|
May Day Connections
Date of Celebration : 1st. MAY
May Day is a name
for various holidays celebrated on May 1 (or in the beginning of
May), the most famous one being Labour Day. May Day is exactly a
half-year from November 1, All Saints' Day. Marking the end of
the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern
hemisphere, it has always been an occasion for popular and often
raucous celebrations, regardless of the political or religious
establishment. May Day was also originally the Celtic holiday
Beltaine, the "Return of the Sun". It is the third and last of
the spring festivals. We can see traces of Beltaine when dancing
around the maypole or sending a basket of flowers to your
neighbor's door. May Day as a modern working class celebration
and commemoration began from the 1886 events in Chicago where
workers were demonstrating for an eight hour day. But the day
already had special significance for working people before then.
PreIndustrial May Day and Working People :
As a working peoples celebration its origins go back much
further, with connections to Ancient Roman rituals. In pagan
Europe it was a festive holy day celebrating the first spring
planting. The ancient Celts and Saxons celebrated May 1st as
Beltane or the day of fire. Bel was the Celtic god of the sun.
In the 1700s the Churches banned the pagan rituals, just as
bosses today want workers to forget any traditions of solidarity
and celebration of workers rights, but many peasants continued
the tradition. Church and state were the butt of many jokes at
May Day celebrations, and this certainly did not endear the
craft guilds and others, who organised celebrations, to the
authorities. The Goddess of the Hunt, Diana, and the God Herne
led parades. Later, with a move to a more agrarian society,
Diana became a fertility goddess, and Herne became Robin
Goodfellow, a predecessor to Robin Hood. This also indicated a
shift in the division of labour and perhaps to a shift in power
relations, with Robin remaining a symbol of the hunter from the
woods, while Diana changed from being a hunter to a symbol of
the fertility of the fields.
May Day was popular through to the nineteenth century, with the
form of the celebration changing. The two most popular feast
days for Medieval craft guilds were the Feast of St. John, or
the Summer Solstice and Mayday. The Diana myth was transformed
into the Queen of May, who was elected from the eligible young
women of the village to rule the crops until harvest. Besides
the selection of the May Queen was the raising of the phallic
Maypole, around which the young single men and women of the
village would dance holding on to the ribbons until they became
entwined, with their ( hoped for) new love. Robin Goodfellow, or
the Green Man who was the Lord of Misrule for this day. Mayday
was a celebration of the common people, and Robin would be the
King/Priest/Fool for a day. Priests and Lords were the butt of
many jokes, and the Green Man and his supporters; mummers would
make jokes and poke fun of the local authorities.. |
