Isn’t it mysterious that so many cultures celebrate May the first? In France they all go giving each other lilies, in the Rhineland boys deliver a tree to the girl they love (I’m not making this up), in Scotland they gather on the beach naked, and in England they all just go around Morris dancing.
Of course this is also the day where worker’s rights are celebrated around the world, this being International Worker’s Day. Except of course in the U.S., where we worry that too much worker solidarity could lead poor people to get uppity. Next thing you know poor people will be demanding the right to vote in Indiana! Not to worry – it’s clear that’s not going to happen any time soon, now that our learned Supreme Court has proudly brought back the poll tax. It’s not like those pesky poor people would know how to handle something as complex as democracy anyway, right?
April may very well be the cruelest month, but personally I think of May as the most polite. After all, isn’t it the only month of the year that announces itself by asking “May I”? 😉
It’s funny that you use the word mysterious to refer to May day. There’s both a comic book and a very odd website called “May Day Mystery.”
The mysterious website:
http://www.maydaymystery.org/mayday/
and the comic:
http://www.comoll.com/tegninger/dimensionsdet/dd1fors.jpg
They do stuff with trees in Austria too. They offer it to someone (friend, gf, family) and they cut it down a month later …. if nobody else already has. This is sort of a game, people running in the woods with a chainsaw to cut the trees of the other ones, ahem, whatever ! lol