May Day, May Day! 1 May 2024

If you know why I just said "May Day" twice instead of thrice, good on you! I'll explain it shortly for the others, but perhaps you will find the rest of the post entertaining nonetheless.

So it's May first, or 1 May, to put it correctly. Did you make someone a May Basket and leave it to-day? Huh? Judas H Priest in the archives, more musty stuff posted here? Whatever am I talking about?  The first of May has a long history of varying significance.  Here's the deal on that.

Distress signal.

OK, maybe you've heard "May Day" as a distress signal in the movies. So why "May Day" for a distress signal, did something really bad happen on 1 May once?  No. The expression originated from the legendary Croydon Airport in London, which closed 30 September 1959. It was the first airport to begin what is now called air traffic control, in 1921. A senior radio officer named Frederick Stanley Mockford was asked to come up with something understood by all concerned to indicate distress, a grave or immanent danger needing immediate help.

It was to be a spoken radio equivalent to the radiotelegraphic SOS in effect since 1 July 1908; the telephonic 9-1-1 was decades away. Since at that time most of the traffic was between Croydon and the also legendary Le Bourget airport in Paris (that's where Charles Lindbergh would land in 1927, and is still open, business jets only), Mockford chose the French phrase "Venez m'aider", Come to my aid. "May Day" is an English corruption of the French phrase.

Now, when given as a distress call it is said three times, to avoid confusion, since the conditions under which it is given are likely fairly confused already. Therefore, to honour the practice, I said it only twice since this is not a distress call.

Floralia.

The original May Day was a Roman (as in Republic, not Empire or Church, though it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between those two) festival of Flora, goddess of flowers. The word flora is still the botanical term for plants, and is the basis of the word for flower in Latin derived languages, such as the Spanish flor. Floralia, the feast, happened on IV Kalends of May, which is between what we call 27 April to 3 May, and was associated with springtime, new life, fertility, end of Winter, all that good stuff.

It was a pretty big blow-out, and an official one too, paid for by the government and supervised by elected government officials called aediles.  Cicero had a hand in the 69 BC event.  There were two kinds of aediles, patrician (from the descendants of the patres, the fathers) and plebian (from the plebs, the regular folks).  The plebian aediles (aediles plebis) were the original ones, and were in charge of the Floralia.  It started with theatrical events (ludi scaenici) and ended with competitions and spectacles.  Suetonius says the Floralia in 68 AD had an elephant walking a tightrope.  Of course this was under Emperor Galba, the first emperor in the notorious Year of the Four Emperors, so hey.  Juvenal says prostitutes would dance naked and put on mock gladiator fights.  Romans were good at blow-outs.  

It's important to notice that this was primarily a plebian festival, for regular folks, free citizens but not patricians.

Others also had Spring-is-here-hooray goings-on.  Now on to them. 

Walpurga Day (and Night).

Our good friends the Germans had Walpurgisnacht, Walpurgis Night. What in all flying Judas is that? Well the custom was pretty common among Germanic types, like the Vikings, and included bonfires to keep away pesky spirits and celebrate the return of light etc. Ain't got nuttin to do with the name though.  Here's the story on that.

Walpurga was an English girl from Devon, the southwestern tip of Mother England named for the Dumnonii, the Briton tribe living in the area when the Romans showed up in 43 AD, including present-day Devon and Cornwall.  Around 741 AD she went with her uncle Boniface and some other English guys from Devon to evangelise the German people, who were not Christian then.  English as spoken in Devon at the time was Germanic (this is well before the Norman Conquest changed everything) so they would be understood. She was Benedictine (of course).  Her dad had stuck her in the Benedictine convent at Wimborne Abbey at age 11 so he and her two brothers could go off on one of those blasted pilgrimages to the "Holy Land", for which dad is known as St Richard the Pilgrim.

Wimborne Abbey is still there, sort of, the original women's nunnery was trashed by the Danes in 1013, rebuilt by the Normans in C12, the rest was appropriated by the "Church of England" when that was invented and it's now a tourist attraction and local parish church.  Church of England, of course. 

Due to her education, Walpurga was able to write an account of their travels, making her the first known female author, English or German.  Her brothers had founded a Benedictine monkery for men and women both in Heidenheim, in Bavaria, of which she eventually became abbess.  She died there on 25 February 777, or 779 depending on who's counting, which following the usual practice was and still is in some places her feast day.  

However, on 1 May, she was canonised a saint by Pope Adrian II in 870, and also on 1 May 870 her remains were dug up and moved -- this is known by the more elegant phrase "translation of the relics" -- from Heidenheim to Eichstätt, which gave rise to a Benedictine abbey which is still there.  As the Christianisation of Europe proceeded, 1 May became her feast day in many places, and the coming of longer sunlight days became associated with her feast day, so that the bonfires and the clergy of the indigenous religion -- aka witches, pejoratively -- had to scatter with the coming of St Walpurga's Day, May Day. Hence Walpurgis Night, the eve of her feast, the night before as their last big blow out. No word on special flights to Blocksberg (the Brocken) for those whose brooms are in the shop.

Beltane.

Another related celebration is the Celtic Beltane. That's one of the four big Celtic feasts, and with Samhain, around 1 November at Winter comes on, the two most important.  1 May is about midway between the Spring equinox and Summer solstice, when the herds are led back to the fields, bonfires are built to protect against the faeries, thought to be particularly active at this time, feasts prepared, often with people jumping over the bonfires.  So, build a bonfire, dance around the May pole -- now there's a phallic fertility symbol for you.  

BTW, related to the sacred tree thing of pre-Christian Germanic types, Boniface (Walpurga's uncle, remember, and btw whose baptismal name was Winifred) supposedly cut down Thor's Sacred Oak in 723 but we still have Thor's Day, Thursday, or Donnerstag, his German name being Donner. Or, make a May basket of sweets, but instead of for Flora or the faeries leave it on somebody's doorstep anonymously, maybe for your own choice to be Queen of the May.

Maia and Mary crowning.

Who's Maia?  "May" comes from Maius in Latin, and is actually named from the Greek fertility goddess Maia, or Maia Maiestas in Latin, and in Roman traditional religion the first and fifteenth of the month were her holy days. 1 May was the date of her festival as the Bona Dea (the good goddess), the goddess of fertility and growth, which likely gave rise to the word maiores, elders ie those who have grown.  Some of which practices survives in some Catholic circles as May crowing, where a crown is put on a statue of Mary, who has the whole month of May dedicated to her.  Not sure what Miriam (Mary) the mother of Jesus would think of being a reconstituted Maia, but it probably ain't good. Do whatever he tells you, she said (John2:5), and he didn't say bupkis about nuttin like this.

International Worker's Day.

Alternatively, May Day is also International Worker's Day. This celebrates the victories of the labour movement, especially the recognition of the eight-hour workday. The date was chosen by the Second International, an association of socialist and labour movements, in 1889. Why 1 May? To commemorate the executions of some of the participants in a strike for the eight hour day on 4 May 1886 at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Hey, didn't I say 4 May, not 1 May? Yes I did. However this particular strike was one of many throughout the land, as the eight-hour workday was supposed to become standard 1 May 1886 and that is when strikes in support of it began. On 4 May at the Chicago one, someone tossed a bomb at the police line -- this is the origin of the phrase "bomb throwing anarchist" -- and it is unknown how many actually died. Among the four eventually executed by hanging for the incident, none was the "bomb throwing anarchist".

In Communist countries May Day was celebrated with parades of workers and military.  In post-Communist countries, as well as many others, the day functions much as Labor Day does in the US.

Feast of St Joseph the Worker.

The Roman Catholic Church reconstituted that too (they do that a lot with stuff).  To counter International Worker's Day, in 1955 along with his (in)famous revisions of the Holy Week liturgy, Pope Pius XII abolished the feast of St Joseph as patron of the universal church, established in 1870 by Pope Pius IX for the Wednesday of the second week after Easter, and created a feast of St Joseph the Worker to be celebrated on 1 May, also thereby boofing the feast of Saints Philip and James from that date.

Conclusion.

All that said, why not make a little basket of sweets for your sweetheart and give it to her as a surprise.   If you go jumping over any bonfires, watch your butt.  And, if you go to an eight-hour workday, remember that the eight-hour workday didn't happen because the forces of the market efficiently and beneficiently produced it, but because some people worked damned hard to bring it about in the marketplace despite its forces.