Memories of the May

Making May Baskets

When I was a little girl in Minnesota, we made May Baskets in school. I remember cutting construction paper into strips and weaving them together. We would then fold up the woven sheets and secure them into little boxes with staples or glue, finally stapling on a handle made from a strip of construction paper. We made flowers with tissue and pipe cleaners to fill our little baskets. We would take them home with us to wait until May 1, when we would trudge over to the neighbor's house, hang the baskets on the door, knock, and run. It was great fun.

Dancing around the Maypole

Usually on the same day we made the baskets, there would be a Maypole set up in the schoolyard. It was a tall pole bedecked with ribbons. We children would each take the end of a ribbon. The teachers would play a record, and when the music started, we would dance and skip around the pole, weaving in and out of each other. I remember laughing around the pole until my ribbon was thoroughly twisted around. When we were done, the pole was decorated with the multi-colored ribbons.

This experience was such a happy one for me that I carried it in my memories until I introduced it to my children when they were small. Most years, I would purchase small baskets and artificial flowers for the children to put together for the neighbors. We would try to make enough May Baskets to hang on the doorknobs of all our closest neighbors.

The Maypole, too, became a tradition for us, along with another small single-mom family with whom we are close friends. While all the children were little, we would try each year to meet for a picnic at a park or other place where we could tie ribbons to a tree or a pole, and the children would dance, much like I did as a little girl. Their schools didn't do these things, so they became family traditions.

Celebrations of new life

While we certainly never discussed certain symbology of the Maypole when my children were young, we did talk about how the flowers, the dance, and the day itself was a celebration of fertility, spring, and the birth of new life. As we recognized the spring equinox as the beginning of spring and newly emerging life, May Day was the continuation of this new life.

My children learned about the pastoral and agricultural cycles as they once were for everyone, because I wanted them to understand that though we cannot always see or feel the rhythm of the cycle of life in the urban world that surrounds us, that rhythm is still there. It is real, and it is important. It is about remembering what life on earth was like before the pollution, climate change, and deforestation. It is about understanding that we need to somehow stop hurting the planet and ourselves.

As an American, I don't really note May Day as a day for workers, since we have Labor Day for that. However, I do acknowledge it, for we live in a global world, and I support people around the world who fight for equality, justice, and fair pay. There is not much more I can do.

My daughter has carried on the traditions of May Day with her daughters. They live in a more rural area, raise goats and chickens, and are starting a garden. I am certain that my granddaughters will get the feel of life's rhythms and the joy of celebrating the turning of the wheel easily. It will make some sense to them.

Perhaps they will carry it on to a new generation, and perhaps they will help change the trajectory of the industrialized world.