Ahh, we just got May Day'd. I didn't think anyone did that anymore. The girls down the street made teeny paper baskets and put two chocolate bits in them and knocked on all the doors of our street and then ran. That is just simply the best that it is still upheld by SOMEONE. Those girls will have richer, deeper lives for it.
Isn't it amazing that's it's already May? It was just January I swear. Here's a bit of May Day lore:
Many of the earliest references to May Day are ambiguous, but those which give any detail nearly always refer to the practice of going out into the countryside to gather flowers and greenery—‘going a-maying’ or ‘bringing in the may’. This greenery was used to decorate houses and public buildings to welcome the season, and for the early period this was the archetypal activity of the day. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, provides one of the first written references to May Day customs by complaining, c.1240, about priests joining in ‘games which they call the bringing-in of may’ (Hutton: 226). Although this early reference is an ecclesiastical grumble, medieval May celebrations were often officially sponsored and both churchwardens' and municipal account books regularly include money paid out to support the custom. Similarly, the gatherings could include all levels of society including nobility and even royalty...The bringing in of the May remained a staple of the traditional calendar throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but voices of opposition began to be raised from reforming Protestant quarters from the time of Edward VI (1547-1553) onwards, gathering pace almost year by year. The assault on May Day took many forms, religious, moral, and legal (public order), but the focus of disapproval of the Bringing-in custom was primarily the concern about what unchaperoned young people would be doing in the woods....Many of the customs associated with the first day of May may come from the old Roman Floralia, or festival of flowers. These include the gathering of branches and flowers on May Day Eve or early May Day morning, the choosing and crowning of a May Queen, and dancing around a bush, tree, or decorated pole, the maypole. The sports and festivities that are held on this day symbolize the rebirth of nature as well as human fertility. In fact, the ritual drinking and dancing around the maypole in colonial America so horrified the Pilgrim Fathers that they outlawed the practice and punished the offenders. This is probably why May Day has remained a relatively quiet affair in this country.
And of course, the Socialists had to go and ruin it as well:
The Second Socialist International in 1889 designated May Day as the holiday for labor, and since that time it has been the occasion for demonstrations, parades, and speeches among socialists and communists.
Last night we watched Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole on DVD. The animation is unbelievable. Steve and I have always liked to watch animated films and I believe we both liked this one. Tonight we have much on TV: The Ax Men, The Killing and The Game of Thrones, wham bam, one after the other.
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