May Day: the End of Winter

Celebrating May Day on May 1st began long before it became International Workers Day in the late 1800s. In ancient times, the Celts divided their year into four seasons and celebrated the festival of Beltane that day, which marked the first day of summer. The Romans held their festival of Floralia around the same time in honour of Flora, the goddess of flowers. Modern May Day celebrations have their roots in these ancient springtime festivals.

Our pagan past

In pagan tradition, the May Queen was a kind of goddess who was believed to fight the Queen of Winter at Beltane. Today, especially in rural areas of the UK, a May Queen is chosen from the local girls on May 1st. This May Queen wears a white dress and a crown of flowers and leads the May Day procession. Another rural tradition is Maypole dancing. Children hold long coloured ribbons attached to a pole, which they dance around. This tradition probably started in pagan times, too, with children dancing around a tree. If you see someone dressed in green and decorated with leaves at a May Day celebration, this is the Green Man or Jack-in-the-Green. He is another reminder of pagan times, when people worshipped trees. Many pubs in England are still called The Green Man in his honour.

Banned by the Puritans

Although May Day has been celebrated for hundreds of years, in England the celebrations were banned for a decade, between 1649 and 1660. This was the period just after the execution of King Charles I, when the Puritans held a lot of power. The Puritans believed that May Day celebrations, with their pagan roots, were un-Christian and so they made them illegal. But when the monarchy was restored in 1660, Charles II, known as “the Merry Monarch”, allowed the May Day celebrations to begin again. He even had a forty-metre Maypole erected in London. 

Local traditions

Some places in the UK have developed their own special May Day traditions. Edinburgh celebrates with the Beltane Fire Festival. This includes a torch-lit procession led by the Green Man and the May Queen. In Oxford, boys from the choir climb the tower of Magdalen College Chapel and sing Latin hymns or carols from the top as the sun rises on May 1st. Wherever you are in the UK, after a long, dark winter, celebrating May Day feels like a great idea.