If I Had A Song . . .

I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening
All over this land . . .

If I had a song . . . I’d sing Happy May Day to each of you . . .
Years ago . . . my May Day was something like this . . .

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This May Day tradition is worth bringing back . . .

Anna Thomas Bates, Special to the Journal Sentinel
(this is not the complete article copied here)

While May 1 might be just another day on the calendar for most of us, throughout history it held
special significance as the midpoint between the spring equinox and summer solstice.

From roaring bonfires to a Maypole bedecked with ribbons and flowers, community picnics
and sweet flower-filled baskets left anonymously on a neighbor’s doorstep,
May Day has a few traditions worth bringing back.

May Day has been celebrated by different cultures as the launch of summer, good weather
and the season of abundance. In Celtic tradition, it was called Beltane, a holiday marked
by large fires and herdsman driving flocks to new, green pastures.
It was a festival of renewal and fertility.

Nineteenth-century Victorians sought to tame the sometimes wild Celtic rituals,
transforming it into a celebration of spring, maidens and virtue.
The traditional English May Day’s most familiar symbol is the Maypole.

A large wooden pole was set up with colorful ribbons attached to the top.
Young girls and boys danced around it, each holding the end of the ribbon as they circled,
changed places and weaved different patterns.

In this 1947 photo, a little girl identified as Connie Wear of Lakewood, Wis., hangs a May basket
that she made in nursery school. (Photo: Wisconsin Historical Society)

A tradition regularly practiced in different parts of this country a generation ago, but less so now,
was delivering May baskets. A homemade basket, usually fashioned from paper,
was filled with seasonal flowers or edible treats. The giver would hang the basket on a friend
or neighbor’s doorknob, ring the bell and run away.

The May baskets I remember looked something like this . . .
I am going way back to my growing up in rural Wisconsin
and remembering making May baskets with my mother.
And also remembering the first May basket hung on the door knob of our house.

And continuing on . . . I remember my first teaching years in Wisconsin
and making cone shaped May baskets out of colored construction paper
with my young students.

They looked much like the ones above, found on Pinterest.
I remember dancing around a May pole too . . . much like in the photo below.

All Photos, articles were found on Pinterest, Safari, Wikipedia . . . none are mine personally.

The Pete Seeger song . . . “If I had a hammer/song . . . “ kept playing in my mind as I thought about
years ago. Who knows why that song was the one strumming through my mind . . .

It’s the little things . . .
‘till next time . . .
Happy May Day my friends . . .
love
lynne