May Day

"Rise and put on your foliage and be seen
To come forth, like the springtime, fresh and green
Wash, dress, be brief in praying;
Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying!"
(Robert Herrick 1591-1674)

The first thing I think of in relation to May Day is May Basketing. As a child, it was something I looked forward to every year. During free time at school the last week in April, we were allowed to use construction paper to make May Baskets. Most of them were made by rolling a piece of paper into a cone like the ones above and taping or pasting them together. Then a strip of paper was pasted on for a handle.
Once we had constructed our little 'baskets', we took them home to fill with popcorn, candy and flowers. Ours had mostly popcorn and only a piece or two of candy. The flowers were usually violets pulled out of the yard or ditch. There were times if I didn't like the person the May Basket was for, I would use dandelions. (Mom wouldn't let us take May Baskets only to people we wanted to, she made us take them to everyone in school.)

With a little help, I learned to make heart shaped May Baskets like these, although adding a handle was more difficult. Handles were important because the idea of May Basketing was to hang the basket on the doorknob, holler "May Basket" and run away without being caught. Of course there were some houses where you wanted to be caught because the catcher was supposed to kiss the catchee.
Our May Basketing was usually done in the early evening. Because we had to be driven around the neighborhood, Mom would stop down the road aways and we would creep up to the houses quietly; drop or hang the baskets, holler "May Basket" and then run. (Run as fast as possible when the ones with the dandelions were left!)
Our front yard would look quite junky on May 1st. We moved in anything we could hide behind in an effort to catch the May Basketers who came to our house. There was still a fence around our yard then which helped our efforts.
I remember the time we stopped along the road north and west of Vogel's so Ron could sneak up to the house through the windbreak. He had to cross a couple fences. When he ran back to the car with Carol and Virginia chasing him, he made it through the fences, but they ran into them and got caught on barbed wire. He was quite unpopular with them for sometime afterwards.

By the time my children were in school, the practice of May Basketing had pretty well died out. I wanted them to experience some of the fun I'd had as a child, so we made May Baskets from paper cups with pipe stem cleaners for handles, filled them with popcorn, candy and flowers and took them to their classmates. The one difference was I let them take baskets only to their friends - their classes at Johnston were too large to take them to everyone.

By the time we moved back to SW Iowa in '78, I had become interested in my Irish heritage and learned about Beltane. When possible, I began having bonfires in conjunction with May Day. A distant cousin suggested adding the traditional "Maiwein" (May wine) to sitting around the fire. I tried it once and went back to my preferred Rose' or to the Moselle or Rhine wine without the addition of the woodruff.

Other May Day traditions include dancing around the Maypole. I especially remember the one at Jordan House in West Des Moines.

The one May 1st tradition I did not like was the USSR's. Known there as International Workers' Day, my most vivid memory is watching soldiers and tanks parade around Red Square on television during the Cold War era. I went to sleep too many nights imagining (fearing) I would wake up in the morning to find uniformed "commies" in our front yard.

No May Baskets or bonfires for me this year. I might pop some corn and eat some candy. I might bring in a small bouquet of violets and drink a glass of wine. The one thing I am for certain going to do this May Day is cheer on Paddy O'Prada during the Kentucky Derby telecast.

Happy May Day. Happy Beltane!