may day, may day!

“[May Day's] roots as a holiday stretch back to pre-Christian pagan festivals, and the Gaelic Beltane. The familiar rituals of dancing around the Maypole and the crowning of the May Queen made it a popular seasonal celebration in medieval England. ”May Day is associated with spring and fertility, the sowing of the seeds. It is a rural tradition,” says Julie-Marie Strange, senior lecturer in Victorian Studies at the University of Manchester. ”It’s things like May Day that remind us we were once an agricultural community. We’ve clung on to these traditions and I’m not sure why we’d want to get rid of them now.” - James Morgan, BBC News

~crow