Monday Memories - May Day

Do you remember celebrating May Day when you were in school? I rarely hear mention of it any more, but I remember doing various activities for May Day in gradeschool. We'd make baskets to take home to our moms with tissue paper flowers in it. We'd also make baskets and put it on someone's front porch, ring their doorbell, and run and hide while watching them come out and be surprised by the gift. I also remember playing a Maypole game. I could not remember exactly what we did - but remembered winding streamers around a pole. I looked it up, and this is one gal's description from her childhood (along with some neat postcards of Mayday):

. . . colorful crepe paper ribbons were attached to the top[of the Maypole] The boys would have a ribbon and walk to the right, the girls would take a ribbon and walk left. The boys and girls would walk in opposite directions holding the ribbons taut. As the children met, we would alternate by going under the ribbon of the first boy then go over the ribbon of the next boy (the boys would reverse the pattern) and so on. This up and down or in and out movement would create a weaving pattern (tabby weave) down the pole as the ribbons got shorter and shorter. I'm not positive, but I think there was an odd number of either boys or an odd number of girls in order to create the weave. It was almost like a dance because we moved to music. The winding of the Maypole was a traditional activity every year that the whole school participated in to welcome spring. Also, when I was young we made May baskets out of squares cut from left over wall paper--rolling them into cone shapes, adding a handle, then filling the baskets with handpicked flowers. That evening we would hang them on our friends' doors (usually older seniors), ring the door bell or knock, then run and hide and watch them find the flowers from our hiding places. I have very fond childhood memories of May Day.

Today we made May Day memories in our home. I've never really spoken of May Day to the kids before, but we decided to make it a fun and delighting someone else. We made paper flowers, picked Apple Blossoms and other spring flowers, put them in tin cans. Our youngest boy even helped with drilling holes in the cans and we attatched ribbons to the cans, along with a tag that said "Happy May Day". (Martha Stewart gave us the idea with how to package our flowers.) We made six deliveries, and the kids got "caught" at 3 of them. But they sure had fun and want to know if we are going to do this tomorrow again!

Do you have May Day memories?