Dancing Around the Maypole

Maypole

When I was a child, May 1 was always a fun day. That’s the day that the girls of Immaculate Conception got to dance around the Maypole while the little boys sang and clapped. It was a whole day of celebrating and merriment. It’s funny to think back now on what the maypole symbolizes and wonder what it had to do with the curriculum at IC. Still, it was fun.

Do kids still dance around the maypole, or was that a throwback thing that anyone under 35 hasn’t heard of?

Posted on May 1, 2008
Filed Under Celebrations | Comments

Comments

  • rick
    I don't know. Young women dancing around "the pole". I gotta believe Freud would have much to say about this.

    I guess my days of innocence are long gone.
  • I guess I must have missed the part about flowers and baskets. I just remember the Maypole. Hmmm...nobody left me a basket...I'm a little slow on the draw. LOL.
  • Merci
    I remember construction paper May baskets in school. I know May poles are an ancient custom - something to do with spring and fertility, am I right? But I seem to remember adult grumblings about May Day and Communism, too. It's all a bit vague, it was sooooo long ago...
  • Sheryl Roche
    May baskets must have been an Iowa thing because we used to do may baskets too! I remember the ringing of the doorbell but not the kissing part!
  • I always wanted to dance around a May Pole, but I never got the option. I did, however, leave flowers on the doorsteps of neighbors, which is what I had read in a book you were supposed to do for May Day.
  • Tami, I'd never heard of that basket tradition, but it made me smile to imagine it. That is just so cool...and what a great mom you had. That's a lovely memory of her.

    Happy May Day to you, too. I didn't see any Maypoles in Philly...but the thought makes me nostalgic.
  • Tami
    Frank - I remember a few may pole celebrations from my youth, mostly during girl scout meetings where they used every holiday as an excuse for a craft or a dance. My most precious memories of May 1st though have to be the May baskets my mother would help us create to put on the doorsteps of friends, ring the bell and run, only to hope the friend (if it was a boy) would open the door and chase us, catch us and kiss us. My mom rocked on this day..no styrofoam cups with pipe cleaners filled with popcorn and circus peanuts.. we MADE real cool baskets or a variation of a basket and put the "good" stuff in them. Quite an act of love from a woman who had seven kids and carried the tradition down through the baby of the family...me.

    Happy May Day!
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