May Day

May Day, or Beltane, is the twin of the fire festival we celebrate on Halloween and All Saints Day or Samhain. I'm going to offer a disclaimer right up front that I talk about what these days mean to me, and how I celebrate them as a hot mess of a Christian Earth Lover. Please do not be offended if my scholarship on the Pagan history is not thorough.  Basically, I know this, When livestock go into the barn in the fall, to be safe from the cold, and when they come out again in the spring, they need a good smoking. To kill the bugs they may have been growing in the meantime. This is a great opportunity to make huge bonfires and proceed between them. In May we are celebrating fertility. Not the new birth tiny sprouting of seed leaves popping up at the Spring Equinox, but the full blooded abundance of mating season.

In the modern western world, May Day has also been associated with strikes and labor unions, so we're right on time this year. We are all struggling hard and working for new things. We are laboring and waiting for fruit. We are all in this together. And we all have different things to contribute.

Many people like to put small bouquets, or nosegays, on their neighbor's doors for May Day. We are now celebrating the May flowers that April's showers promised. Earth is spilling over with beautiful life, reminding us that we don't toil in vain. I like to bring these two traditions together. We make flower door hangers for our neighbors, and pass them out as a sort of, "Keep up the Good Work, Comrade."

I am not a super gardener, nor do I live in an abundantly floral climate. There are a good deal of wild flowers in the beginning of April, but many are illegal to pick, and they have all died by now. So I use what we've got. We keep our cereal boxes for little kid painting projects, and we recycle tissue that we receive with gifts.

So, I cut the two large sides of a cereal box into rough oval shapes, use an exact knife to trace a handle out of half of it, and use a black or brown sharpie to draw a bit of basket weave onto them.

It’s important to use two layers of tissue. I forgot on my first one this time, because I hadn’t done it in a while, but you use two layers and then pull them apart, and that’s where the poof comes from.

Then we accordion fold long strips of tissue paper, and staple them in the middle. You fluff up the flowers and hot glue them to the opening of the basket.

You can add a little note of encouragement, and let people know where they're from.

We are seeing a lot of laboring for a better world going on around us. There are ways we can participate, and also so much that we cannot do. I recently heard Julien Baker say on the Muna podcast, how if we're not careful, all the world news on our tiny screens, of fights taking place far away can make us feel helpless, and keep us from doing what we can where we are. This hit me hard. I feel like this a lot. I sway between, "What can I do? I have more than I can say grace over, right here in my lap." To "How dare I sit here in my comfortable home doing nothing while my human family goes through this." The answer is somewhere between. There are things I can do to serve my neighbors, and when I can I give to support causes farther away. I can boycott corporations that support violence policies. But I think the biggest thing I can do, every day, but especially today, is to cheer on those around me. We are all doing small and beautiful things to love on our own communities, and when our spirits are getting heavy, we keep each other going with love and encouragement.