Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire! – John Milton, “Song on a May Morning”
As I’ve often stated, all of the great holidays are just old pagan ones with new names and new Christian or secular coats of paint; scratch that thin veneer and the heathen origin of the observance becomes obvious to all but the most willfully blind. But while festivals like Christmas, Halloween and even Valentine’s Day have thrived, others have limped along in some maimed form, while still others have simply fallen by the wayside. But Beltane is probably the only one which was actively suppressed: many of its features were transferred to Easter and others were banned after the Protestant Reformation, and the day itself was preempted by a dreary and ultra-serious labor rights observance which should actually have been held three days later. The reason for these concerted attempts to destroy the holiday is very simple: it’s the only one which is entirely about sex. Oh, lots of spring festivals have their sexual components, but “lusty” May Day was entirely devoted to it. And as Western culture became less and less comfortable with sex over the last two millennia, and more and more determined to suppress it, poor May Day just had to go. Other than neopagan rituals and a few European remnants like May Queen festivals and May Eve bonfires, the holiday has almost entirely vanished; even the pathetic efforts of leftover Marxists get more attention. And that’s just sad; perhaps sex workers and our supporters need to reclaim it, strip it of the false fig leaves with which some have tried to cover its nature, and once again herald it as a day to celebrate Nature’s gift of sex.
Blessed Be!
Though the date may be forced, I’m disappointed to see you dismiss the workers’ fight to not be exploited (or at least, less than before) just because it’s linked to an ideology you hate.
Have a nice May Day.
I don’t dismiss it; I merely disapprove of the chosen day and the unsavory historical associations of the observance, and suggest wise activists would choose another. Linking oneself to Marxism decades after the dramatic failure of the ideology is just dumb. If it’s my characterization of the observers you object to, I put it to you that they generally ARE dreary & ultra-serious, and while there are times when such demeanor might be appropriate, Beltane is not among them.
The strike that ended with the bombing started on the 1st. The day was probably chosen because of the ancient festival, at least in part. But this happens all the time, as you have pointed out many times.
And though many concepts of Marxism have been disproved, workers uniting to defend their interests against corporate exploitation and police repression (not so much in Western countries these days for the latter) is still very much current.
A blessed Beltane to you, too.
When I was a parishioner at St. Bernadette’s Church in Silver Spring, MD there was an event held in May to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary called the May Procession. We would march around the church (or maybe it was the school) saying the rosary and a statue of Mary would be crowned with flowers. This only happened at this specific church and it never caught on to other Catholic parishes, but I can’t help but wonder—did this May Procession grow out of the original May Day festivities you refer to in this column?
Yep. Reread my first column on the holiday.
One of the most annoying things about western culture is just how much more difficult it is to celebrate a holiday that not everyone celebrates than the ones everyone celebrates.
As a Jew, I cannot agree. The fact that we are responsible for our own holidays makes them that much more rewarding. In my office people complain about not getting Good Friday off. But no one takes leave for it.
I do understand that celebrating alone is not much fun. But if you want to celebrate Beltane, dig up a few like minded friends and go for it.
I agree. Everyone should accommodate me, and the holidays I choose to celebrate.
Especially X-Day.
In the past when villagers went out into the woods to celebrate May Eve/Beltane at some point in the proceedings there was a cry of “Mix it up!” and it was said that no girl who went into the woods as a maiden came out as one in the morning. (That’s the tradition anyway)
There are lots of places in Ireland called ‘Beltany’; one in Co Donegal has a stone circle, with—apparently—celestial alignments designed to be seen on 1 May. But as the forecast was so bad, I didn’t go. Indeed, I really wonder how the ancients ever managed to arrange alignments involving the sun, but they did. How?
Length of day. You still know when the sun rises and sets regardless of clouds, all you need is a secondary time keeping method ( which is fairly obvious in the wilderness- trees bloom based on a solar schedule)
It’s a common thing, for people to think that The Ancients were somehow less capable than ourselves for not having engines and computers, people who think that the pyramids must have been put there by aliens.
Personally, I can’t see the difficulty with arranging rocks to line up with the sun. It’s kinda right there in the sky, after all. And without streetlights, the stars were much more part of their world and imagination than ours. If you have never gone out to a dark-sky area, away from cities, you should do so at least once. It’s – its unimaginable, to people who live in cities all their lives, what the sky really looks like.
http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/
http://www.darkskydiscovery.org.uk/
[…] of the seasons on the solstices and equinoxes and perceive the cross-quarter days (Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain…or as Americans call them, Ground Hog Day, May Day, August 1st and Halloween) […]