May Day, May Day, May Day!

Happy May 1, one and all!  I have posted about May Day in the past – see below, with some new additions! 🙂

Ah, May 1! This day has been celebrated in so many ways through so many cultures. The halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice,  May 1 has elicited many different rituals through the years.

For Wiccans, this is Beltane; many Catholics celebrate the life of the Vigin Mary in some way.  Yours truly was once the "May Queen" at her Catholic elementary school – St. Anthony of Padua on Canal Street in New Orleans.  Yes, I got to wear the beautiful white outfit and lead the procession into the church and lay the first roses at the foot of the statue of the Virgin Mary.  Pretty heady stuff for an 8-year-old girl. (Somehwere I have a picture of this and just have to find it – I am sure some of you will find it a hoot!)

Of course, nevermind the Catholics totally borrowed the holiday from the pagans who celebrated their first fertility rituals of the year on this date.  ;-)  Children conceived on this date are said to have special magickal powers.  Children conceived on Walpurgis (the night before May 1, Beltane Eve) are said to have the ability to communicate with the dead because Walpurgis is, traditionally, one of the days when the veil between the world of the living and the dead is considered most thin and penetrable.

May 1 is often celebrated with different types of floral offerings.  In some countries the ladies all wear flowers on this day – if your flower is worn on your right side, you are available; a flower on the left signifies that you are already taken.   This is also considered the day to meet a new lover or celebrate an old one.  ;-) 

The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian times, with the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and the Walpurgis Night celebrations of the Germanic countries.
It is also associated with the Gaelic Beltane. Many pagan celebrations were
abandoned or Christianized during the process of conversion in Europe. A more
secular version of May Day continues to be observed in Europe and America. In
this form, May Day may be best known for its tradition of dancing the maypole dance and crowning of the Queen of the May.

This day is often associated with new beginnings, planting a new seed, looking towards shedding off the past and looking towards the future with new, hopeful ideation.  Not too many of us get the chance to dance around the Maypole these days, but certainly you can do that in your heart and mind.  I hope you all have a beautiful May 1 and beyond!  Let's look towards new beginnings, new hope, and beautiful outcomes for us all.

Love, light, and peace,
Mambo Samantha Corfield
www.spellmaker.com

 P.S. Despite my title of this post, the distress call "MayDay" has nothing to do with May Day! LOL.  It is from the French venez m'aider, meaning "come help me".  Of course, we could do some work to ask for help today from a particular lwa, such as Erzulie Freda.  ;-)  And there is the fact that the distress call MayDay is always said in groups of three.  Gee, I can find Voodoo in anything! 🙂