May Day

• 1. Introduction

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  May Day has been celebrated on the first of May for thousands of years, yet the bonfire lit in an Irish field and the maypole raised in a German village trace back to the same ancient impulse: marking the moment when winter finally loses its grip. The festival sits roughly halfway between the spring equinox and the midsummer solstice, a threshold that human communities across the Northern Hemisphere have been crossing with ceremony since at least the Roman Republic. What drives people to gather in the streets, crown a queen with flowers, and leap over open flames every year at the same moment on the calendar? And how did a single seasonal moment give rise to so many different traditions across dozens of cultures, each convinced their version is the original one?

• 2. Roman Roots

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  The Floralia, festival of Flora, goddess of flowers, ran from the 27th of April to the 3rd of May during the Roman Republic era. It opened with theatrical performances before moving into something more chaotic. Ovid records that hares and goats were released into the crowds. Persius describes spectators being pelted with vetches, beans, and lupins. A ritual called the Florifertum was performed on either the 27th of April or the 3rd of May, during which a bundle of wheat ears was carried into a shrine, though ancient sources disagree on whether Flora or Ceres received the offering. The Floralia closed with competitive events, spectacles, and a sacrifice to Flora herself.

  Running alongside it, though on a different calendar, was the Maiouma, a festival honoring Dionysus and Aphrodite that was held every three years during the month of May. Records show that Emperor Commodus appropriated funds for the month-long festival at least as early as the 2nd century AD. The 6th-century chronicler John Malalas described it as a nocturnal dramatic festival known as Orgies, meaning the Mysteries of Dionysus and Aphrodite, celebrated with splendorous banquets and all-night revels paid for by the government. Its reputation for licentiousness brought it down. Emperor Constantine suppressed it; a tamer version briefly returned under Arcadius and Honorius, then was suppressed again.

• 3. Fire and the Celtic Calendar

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  In Gaelic culture, the first of May was Beltaine or Ceitshamhain, first recorded in 900 AD. The celebration centered on fire as a practical and ritual force. Special bonfires were kindled whose flames, smoke, and ashes were believed to carry protective powers. All household fires were doused and then re-lit from the Beltaine bonfire. People and cattle walked around or between the fires; sometimes they leaped over the flames or embers. Food and drink were offered to the aos si, the spirits or fairies. Yellow May flowers were used to decorate doors, windows, byres, and cattle, perhaps because their color evoked fire.

  In Ireland, the Dublin suburb of Finglas was well known for its May Games for almost two centuries, and its maypole was described by historian Michael J. Tutty as one of the last to survive in Dublin. Throughout the 18th century, the Finglas maypole stood at the center of a week of festivities including games, competitions, and the crowning of a Queen of the May. A letter written on the 2nd of May 1803 by Major Sirr, shortly after the turbulent 1798 Rebellion, records that celebrations in Finglas proceeded peacefully and that the old custom of Maying had been kept up there for a century without interruption. By the 20th century, public celebrations of Bealtaine had faded in Ireland, and a May Bush tradition was reported as having been suppressed by law and magistrates in Dublin during the 18th century.

  In Wales, the first of May was Calan Mai or Calan Haf, meaning first of summer. May Eve bonfires were lit, hawthorn and flowers were gathered to decorate homes, and the day itself included summer dancing and May carols. One distinct Welsh custom was the formal opening of a village green, known as a twmpath chwarae, specifically on May Day.

• 4. Saints, Witches, and Walpurgis

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  In the Germanic countries, May Eve became Walpurgis Night, marking the official canonization of Saint Walpurga on the 1st of May 870. Folklorist Jack Santino has observed that her day and its traditions almost certainly trace back to pre-Christian celebrations at the same time of year. The bonfires that had lit up the night in pagan northern Europe simply continued under a saint's name.

  In Tyrol during the 19th century, as reported by Sir James George Frazer in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, the last three days of April saw every house fumigated with juniper and rue incense. At sunset on May Day came the ceremony called burning out the witches. Church bells rang, people made as much noise as possible by shouting, banging pots and pans, ringing bells, and cracking whips. Men carried lighted bundles of herbs fastened on poles; women carried censers. Then they ran seven times around the houses and the village so that the witches would be smoked out of their lurking-places and driven away.

  In Sweden, mock battles between Summer and Winter were held on May Day itself up until the 19th century. Frazer recorded the scene in The Golden Bough in 1911: two troops of young men on horseback met as if for combat. One was led by a representative of Winter clad in furs who threw snowballs and ice to prolong the cold weather. The other was led by a representative of Summer covered with fresh leaves and flowers. Summer's side won the sham fight, and the ceremony ended with a feast. Most Swedish maypole dancing and other May Day traditions shifted to Midsummer instead.

• 5. England's Maypoles and Puritan Bans

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  The earliest English records of maypole celebrations date to the 14th century, and by the 15th century the tradition was well established in southern Britain. On the 1st of May 1515, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon rode from Greenwich Palace to have breakfast in an arbour constructed in a wood at Shooter's Hill. Catherine and her ladies wore Spanish-style riding gear; Henry was dressed in green velvet. The royal guard appeared in disguise as Robin Hood and his men, and a pageant chariot carried Lady May and Lady Flora, followed by a masque and dancing. The chronicle writer Edward Hall recorded the event as a Maying.

  Writer Philip Stubbs described the scene in the 1580s in detail: oxen with flowers tied to the tips of their horns drew the maypole home, covered all over with flowers and herbs, while two or three hundred men, women, and children followed it with great devotion. Once raised, with handkerchiefs and flags streaming at the top, people strewed the ground, bound green boughs to the pole, set up summer halls and bowers, and then, in Stubbs's words, fell to banquet and feast, to leap and dance about it.

  May Day was abolished during the Interregnum under Puritan parliaments, but reinstated with the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Several English celebrations claim unbroken records stretching back into the 19th century: the Ickwell May Day traces records to 1872; the Knutsford Royal May Day was revived in 1864; the Hayfield May Day was revived in 1928. In Oxford, a centuries-old tradition sees May Morning revellers gather below the Great Tower of Magdalen College at 6 am to hear the college choir sing traditional madrigals, a conclusion to the previous night's celebrations. Since the 1980s, some people jump off Magdalen Bridge into the River Cherwell, despite the water being only 2 feet deep and the bridge now being closed on the 1st of May to prevent injury.

• 6. Flowers Across Europe

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  On the 1st of May 1561, King Charles IX of France received a lily of the valley as a lucky charm and decided to offer one to the ladies of his court each year. At the beginning of the 20th century, the custom spread: people began giving sprigs of lily of the valley as symbols of springtime on May Day. The French government permits individuals and workers' organisations to sell them tax-free on that single day.

  In Italy, the seasonal feast is called Calendimaggio or cantar maggio, taking its name from the Latin kalendae maiae, meaning the beginning of May. Groups known as the maggerini sing auspicious verses to households in exchange for gifts of eggs, wine, food, or sweets. The verses vary widely across the Italian peninsula but most are love songs celebrating the arrival of spring. In Tuscany, the figure of Calendimaggio was historically linked to a mythical character associated with the god Belenus. In Syracuse, Sicily, the Albero della Cuccagna, a greasy pole festival, is held during May to commemorate a victory over an Athenian force led by Nicias, though scholar Angelo de Gubernatis argued that the festival was older than that historical event.

  In the Czech Republic, the celebrations of spring are held on the 30th of April when a maypole called a majka is erected, often alongside bonfires connected to a Beltane-like tradition. The maypole is taken down on the 31st of May in an event called Maypole Felling. On the 1st of May itself, couples kiss under a blooming tree, a custom that ethnographer Klara Posekana traces not to ancient practice but to the early 20th century, most likely connected to Karel Hynek Macha's poem Maj and to Petrin hill in Prague.

• 7. May Day Beyond Europe

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  In Hawaii, May Day is known as Lei Day, a celebration of island culture and Native Hawaiian traditions. Poet and newspaper columnist Don Blanding invented it, and the first Lei Day was held on the 1st of May 1927 in Honolulu. Leonard Red Hawk and Ruth Hawk composed the traditional holiday song, May Day Is Lei Day in Hawai'i.

  In Minneapolis, the May Day Parade and Festival draws around 50,000 people to Powderhorn Park each year on the first Sunday in May. The festival was originated by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and is now community-run. On the 1st of May itself, Morris Dance sides converge on an overlook of the Mississippi River at dawn. The English custom of dancing the sun up at sunrise began in Oxford in 1923, and by 2024 Morris dancers were dancing the sun up across thirteen US states including Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Wisconsin, as well as in Asia, Australia, Canada, France, and New Zealand.

  In Finland, Walpurgis night, known as Vappu, is ranked among the five biggest holidays of the year alongside Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Easter, and Midsummer. The celebrations center on the consumption of sima, a home-made low-alcohol mead, along with sparkling wine and freshly cooked funnel cakes. Since the end of the 19th century, what was once an upper-class feast has been taken over by university students, many of whom wear student coveralls or the black and white student cap. The longest continually observed May Day in the British Commonwealth is held not in Britain but in New Westminster, British Columbia, where the first celebration took place on the 4th of May 1870.