Flowers and the Origins of May Day

History of May Day and it's flowers.

Geranium sanguineum 'New Hampshire'
Item # 54510 		Geranium sanguineum 'New Hampshire'
New Hampshire Hardy Geranium

each $7.99
3 to 6 plants $7.79
7 or more $7.59
  • Topic: Spring Gardening
  • Author: Cindy Bellinger
  • Keywords: flowers, May Day, Other
  • Date: May 2003

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It’s May Day! Don’t tell anyone, but I still have a yearning to dance around a May Pole. When I was in elementary school, it was my favorite festival. Tetherball poles were brightly decorated with ribbons. We danced and sang, had cookies and punch. Whatever happened to those simple celebrations?

And remember running up to neighbors’ doors, setting down a May Basket, knocking, then running away? If there was a hedge nearby, you could hide and watch people open their doors and find flowers on the their door step.

I’d love to cut some flowers from my garden and sneak them over to my neighbor’s door step. But alas. No flowers yet. In fact, at my house I’m still waiting for that last frost date, which always seems to come a little later than anywhere else. My Iris still haven’t come up yet. The Hyacinth are just barely poking through. So much for making baskets that spill over with flowers straight from the garden.

But according to Dave Abernathy, our greenhouse manager, you can begin putting a few flowers in the garden now.

“I’d start with marigolds and petunias,” he said. “These are good for instant flowers.”

Other quick and easy flowers for instant color that he suggested are snapdragons, alysum and geraniums. “Also,” he said, “we have hanging baskets of flowers. You can take off the wire hangers and set them in pots.”

Commemorating May with flowers has been going on a long time. The ancient Celts celebrated May 1 as Beltane, or the day of the fire. Bel was the Celtic god of the sun. It also commenced the first day of the Celtic summer. At the same time Germanic tribes celebrated Walpurgis; the Romans called the day Floralia. Wherever they took place, May festivals were “the wearing of the green” as people rejoiced the return of spring.

From all accounts, these revelries were wild. The return of spring signified fertility and May Day festivities became times of sexual license. Societal taboos were lifted for a night; it was a way to fertilize the fields.

An early friar noted, “all the yung men and maides, olde men and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, groves, hils, and mountains, where they spend all the night in plesant pastimes… [only] a third of them returned home againe undefiled.”

Finally, in 1644 the English Parliament banned the old traditions. But still May Day was observed. A tree was cut then ribbons were tied to its top before it was erected in the village square. During the dancing, half the ribbons would be taken up by young boys, and the other half by girls. The boys would dance clockwise around the pole, the girls counter-clockwise. It was often a rehearsed dance so the ribbons wound round the pole in a pattern; the better the pattern, the better the harvest.

During medival times, after May all spare hands were expected to work the land with no time for personal pursuits. Food supplies for the rest of the year were sown, therefore securing the well-being of the community. An old country rhyme was ‘Marry in May and rue the day!’. If you played, you wouldn’t eat.

Today, we’ve few of us even think of this wild, pagan day. But this doesn’t mean we can’t surprise our friends and neighbors with baskets of flowers.