May Day

This May Day began with sunshine, but at 2 PM the sky is heavily overcast. Through a nearby open window I hear a bird chirping. Another bird, probably a crow, screeches and caws as though a neighborhood cat is after its baby. For too many people, my street is a shortcut to the mall; automobiles rumble past my house, spewing noxious fumes. The air is damp and smells of rain. It has rained every day this week. But April showers, it is said, bring May flowers, so it’s all good.

Today is May 1. May Day, the first day of May, has long been celebrated by many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere: it is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane, the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night, and the Roman festival of Flora. In pre-Christian Europe, May 1 was considered to be the first day of summer. In some countries, Socialists and Communists celebrate May Day as International Workers’ Day, a day which began in the United States to commemorate the Haymarket affair in Chicago that occurred on May 4, 1886.

In America, we used to celebrate May Day by doing things like giving May baskets and crowning a May Queen. I said “used to”; nowadays we’re too cool to do those kinds of things. We’ve evolved. Now we’re sophisticated; we’re grown-up; we’ve put away childish things.

There are still places in the world that celebrate May Day with fireworks and canelazo and colorful processions and even a bit of reverence. But to experience that, we cool people must now board a jet to a distant land where we might recall the value in shared ritual and know that there are people who remember how to play.