When I was a little kid, like in kindergarten, we had a Maypole celebration and a little party with hats and cake put on by our mothers. That was in the suburbs of Sacramento, CA. near the foothills where Coloma lives now. It was a celebration of Spring. The dominant culture around me were immigrants from the states affected by the Dust Bowl—former agrarians—which may have had something to do with it.. As we emerged from the toddler age, the celebrations stopped.
My grammar school was run by Irish nuns, from the economically depressed west coast of Ireland and they gave it honorable mention, but no celebration. They were a little homesick, I think, finding themselves in a place that didn’t celebrate.
When I was eleven, we moved to Florida where there was no mention at all of May 1st, except we would see the Russian military parade on the news, Khrushchev standing on the platform above the Kremlin plaza while his ICBMs passed by on the parade ground below. It instilled fear in us and was nothing to celebrate.
Years later, I lived in Sweden and it was huge. There were maypole celebrations in almost every town square with school children with their maypoles, people dressed in their regional traditional costumes with their maypoles, traditional music played with traditional musical instruments—everyone wore crowns of wild flowers. The Social Democrats and Communist Party each had a big national parade through the streets of Stockholm, big red flags everywhere, in celebration of worker’s rights. But it had the feeling of a celebration, not a protest or demonstration. It was very nice, a very big deal. Other European countries celebrated and this was shown on Swedish TV that evening.
Ten years later, I returned to the States and have not seen any celebrations for Spring or for labor. I don’t know why I’ve not seen many of these things in the US. It may be that we are not as agrarian as we were in the early 1900s, when there were many celebrations, especially in rural areas. It may be that we’ve lost our immigrant traditions over time. And it may be that the Bolshevik Revolution scared us so badly that these celebrations were co-opted, in the national consciousness, by Communism. I’ve often wondered about this.
Срећан први мај!
Composing members:
0
Composing members:
0
