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May Day

Days left:
May Day falls on 29.03.2024 (Friday)
The date of May Day in other years:

Early May Bank Holiday

Historically, May 1 has been a festivity of beauty, fertility, and the beginning of life. Nowadays, British May Day falls on the first Monday of the month and is also associated with the rights of the working class due to the first-May demonstrations of the Labour movement throughout the 19th and 20th century.

The holiday derives from ancient pagan rituals, but has been adopted into Christianity. It is supposed to welcome summer, though according to the modern calendar, this season begins in June. May Day celebrations include colorful clothing and decorations, different types of joyful dancing, and fantasy figures such as: the May Queen, Jack in the Green and Hobby Horses. Scotland is the region in Great Britain that has another name for this occasion, Early May Bank Holiday.

The roots of May Day can be traced back to a number of ancient festivities, such as Gaelic Beltane, Germanic Walpurgis Night, or others from Egypt and even India. The strongest connection, however, is supposedly between May Day and the ancient Roman festival of Floralia, honoring the goddess of flowers Flora and celebrating the midpoint of springtime. In Great Britain, these traditions were mainly adopted by villagers; they celebrated after the period of seeding in spring. With the coming of Christianity, pagan customs had been increasingly condemned, and finally, in 1644, the Puritans took advantage of the interregnum and banned all such holidays. May Day was so popular, though, that once king Charles II was restored to power in 1660, he gave the customary back to the people. The holiday was subjected to syncretisation, and soon the queen of spring was associated with Virgin Mary.

The United Kingdom officially adopted May Day in 1978, even though it has been known as a public holiday in Scotland for more than a century. In 2011, the British government began to doubt the holiday’s significance and considered replacing May Day with an October occasion that would be called the United Kingdom Day.

The first Monday of May is celebrated in many major institutions, such as Oxford University or Durham University. Main festivities around the country include singing of traditional madrigals, dancing around the maypole, Morris dancing, crowning the May Queen, and watching Jack in the Green. The maypole is a high rod, symbolizing a tree cut by medieval villagers in spring, from which hang colorful ribbons. The dancers go around the pole, entangling it with the strings. This has been traditionally performed by women, and polarized them with the Morris-dancing men. Nowadays, however, it is children that are invited to play around the maypole. The costumes of men who perform Morris dancing are always decorated with bells and ribbons. These groups of male dancers are usually accompanied by Jack in the Green, a mythological woodland spirit who once was believed to protect English forests. He is dressed in a costume that reminds a shrub -- a big ball of leaves and other greenery. The Queen is selected among the young women and crowned.

May Day is a bank holiday and most institutions and businesses are closed. Although the government sees it as a decreasingly important occasion, some organized groups, such as neopagans, contribute to the holiday’s revival. May Day is detached from the Christian or patriotic ideas that dominate the list of British bank holidays, but this is exactly why it should be preserved. The festivity is a reminder of the ancient ancestors that are doomed to be forgotten, and thus it is a tradition that builds the national pride as much as it honors other cultures.

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