May traditions: mostly harmless
You’d hardly know it from the media in 2024 (but then the media is notoriously poor at history) but May Day and early May is one of those parts of the year which has a large number of ‘traditions’, mostly not currently celebrated, associated with it.
Perhaps the most well known is dancing around the Maypole, which some have suggested was a phallic symbol (highly doubtful) and was disliked by hard line Protestants and Puritans for being a bit pagan.
Early May is also time to mark new growth and that traditionally includes liaisons between young men and women. This supposedly led to an increased birth rate nine months later except that fairly recent research has underlined that it didn’t. In fact heading off into the woods or grassland to make love was not all that popular because, as is still the case in 2024, outside was all a bit cold and wet.
The tradition of May Day greenery and garlands again to mark the coming of Spring perhaps still has some resonance and it’s worth noting that Eton schoolboys were allowed to get up at 4am to gather such things. There is absolutely no evidence that Boris Johnson ever bothered unless of course he had in fact not yet gone to bed at that time.
Maybe Mayday should be less harmless….