May Day - a remembrance from the past

MAY DAY!  Does anyone remember how we used to celebrate this day?

I can remember when I was in grade school and we were divided up in teams and given pastel colored crepe paper streamers.  The tether balls had been removed from the poles and our teacher would take the end of our streamers to tape to the top of the pole and then helped guide us as we wove in and out.  One group would go clockwise while the other went counterclockwise.  The streamers made a colorful braided affect on the pole and we would stand back to admire our decorated pole and clap.

Every year we looked forward to the May Pole dance as we called it.  If May Day happened to fall on a weekend day, we always decorated the poles on Friday before so when we drove by the school, we could admire them.

But the fun part came from the week before as we cut and pasted pieces of construction paper into little baskets.  We might decorate them with crayons or pieces of lace or trim our mothers had. Sometimes we would cut up the lacy looking paper doilies to use for decoration or to cover the outside of the basket.  Once the baskets were all made and of course we knew just how many to make as we would make a list of those we wanted to "hang" the baskets for.

We would sit around the table under the supervision of our mother so we didn't put too much or too little in each basket.  We always had the small pastel colored mints and spanish peanuts.  After the baskets were filled with the goodies, my brother and I would scour the yard picking every wild violet we could find so we could add the tiny flowers to the baskets.

My mother would place all the baskets in a small box or sometimes on a cookie sheet and we loaded up in the car as my dad began driving around our small town stopping at the houses my brother and I wanted to "hang" a basket.

We would get out of the car and carry the basket to the porch, set it down and then yell out "May Basket" and run as fast as we could back to the car, hoping to get back safely before we were caught by the receiver and given a kiss.  Of course, sometimes we wanted the kiss so didn't run as fast as other times.  HA!

It was such a fun and exciting time and the thrill of sneaking up to leave the basket on a porch or step and then yelling out and running was the most fun.  Perhaps that is one reason the holiday which is sadly forgotten now, was one of my favorites.

When we would return home, there would be several baskets on our porch which was delight and then we could take our turn at standing near the door to watch for those who were yet to come so we could chase them and hopefully catch the ones we wanted to catch.

It is a remembrance from the past and one I wish would be revived today.  We were so proud of our little baskets we made and the rewards of receiving a lot of baskets ourselves.  Maybe it was because we did live in a small rural community but I would still like to see it happen again, even if it is just the neighborhood.  What a pleasant surprise to find a small basket with a few mints and peanuts and of course the beloved wild violet.

Happy May Day everyone!