May Day

[Supremely White]

Okay, I’m a bit late for this, but I’d been wondering for some time how May First went from being a beautiful ancient European tradition, portrayed in some old movies, with girls wearing floral wreaths on their hair and the kids all dancing around the Maypole and music and festivities, into a bunch of wetbacks making a ruckus (demonstrations), carrying Mexican flags, shouting “Si, se puede!.

I guess the usual suspects are behind it…Every Single Time, as a way of eclipsing our heritage and it’s culture and traditions.
Even in Europe, it’s a bunch of camel jocks and other assorted non-Europeans occupying Europe, rioting out in the streets.

I hope more of our people keep the original meaning of May Day alive.
It’s not just a distress call in French m’aidez!.

[Will Williams]

Okay, I’m a bit late for this, but I’d been wondering for some time how May First went from being a beautiful ancient European tradition, portrayed in some old movies, with girls wearing floral wreaths on their hair and the kids all dancing around the Maypole and music and festivities, into a bunch of wetbacks making a ruckus (demonstrations), carrying Mexican flags, shouting “Si, se puede!.

I guess the usual suspects are behind it…Every Single Time, as a way of eclipsing our heritage and it’s culture and traditions.
Even in Europe, it’s a bunch of camel jocks and other assorted non-Europeans occupying Europe, rioting out in the streets.

I hope more of our people keep the original meaning of May Day alive.
It’s not just a distress call in French m’aidez!.

Just noticed this, your 88th post at WB.

I'm old enough to remember celebrating May Day around the May pole in my all-White elementary school in our all-White community back in the early 1950s. We will enjoy that tradition again, believe me, free of non-White intruders. Believe me.

Kids dancing around May pole - it's a European thing

If we do not conceive it and work for it, it will not happen.

[Richard_G_603]

I've been putting a lot of study recently into historical European ethnic faiths, but from the perspective of the folk/oral traditions and not the literary tradition, What the people actually practiced from historical accounts, and not what some scholar wrote down at some point, the level of difference is incredible.
The more I learned the more I could see we have truly been robbed. We were a people of festival and celebrations, who celebrated family, community, and life with great frequency. May day was one of those, it marked in many areas the beginning of the planting season, was when boys began to court girls for the summer, was when children born in the winter or early spring were welcomed to the whole community. We were never this atomized individualist society we have been forced into today, we were strong and vibrant tribes celebrating the strength of life together on holidays like May Day.
It has only further illustrated the absolute necessity of our own space for our people to truly be ourselves once again.

[Supremely White]

I guess that urbanization and of course, non- European diversity have put this beautiful tradition to the wayside. Will was lucky enough to have been born at the right time, when there were all- White schools and before the fair housing act, where, at least from what I see on older t.v. shows, people knew who their neighbors were and were of similar backgrounds. Also, people tended to stay in one place for most, if not all of their lives, unlike the transient ways of modern society.

Forget about where I live, but when I lived in the old folk’s neighborhood over a year ago, and there were White people, among others, who were old enough to have probably done the proper May Day festivities, we lived in very close quarters of high density condos in a concrete jungle, and were living so close together that we could get on one another’s nerves.

Nope, I could never imagine making a May Basket and leaving it on anyone’s doorstep, even the friendly neighbors. They’d probably act confused and ask me what that was all about.

And kids, even in my elementary years, didn’t do the May pole dancing, nor were we taught about it, because we had a few black kids and a disproportionate amount of black teachers, and it wasn’t their tradition at all. Even our all-White Girl Scout troop and den mothers didn’t bring it up. It would’ve been a fun scouts meeting.

Remember the words to Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven…”it’s just a spring clean for the May Queen…”, and until recently, I didn’t know what it meant.

Once we get our own spaces, then we can get back that sense of community and give the European May Day the revival that’s long overdue. Until such time, the lemmings will only care about what happened on Dancing With the Stars or some vapid reality shows.