In case you haven’t noticed, this past Thursday was May 1, 2025, and it was also the National Day of Prayer.

The mere fact that it is the beginning of May conjures up many different scenarios in my mind. The first thing I think of is that it is a day of celebration. Although Ol’ Man Winter seems to be hanging on, the calendar tells us it’s time to welcome spring and celebrate new beginnings. The month of May certainly does this by providing flowers of bright colors to celebrate May Day. I’ve seen an abundance of tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths, lilacs, along with various fruit trees in full bloom.

When I was a youngster, we made May Baskets and filled them with bright blooming flowers from our gardens and hung them on the front doors of our neighbors. To find a May Day Basket hanging on your front door was a big treat in those days.

At school, we celebrated the traditional May Pole Dance by weaving bright ribbons around the May pole (which was usually the flag pole). We were taught that the May Pole Dance originated in England. On the first day of May, English villagers woke at daybreak to roam the countryside to gather branches and flowers.

A towering maypole was set up on the village green. The pole itself was usually the trunk of a tall birch tree and was decorated with all the flowers and branches the villagers had gathered. The village piper would lead the parade as they all danced and sang around the maypole.

In the Ozarks, which has a strong history of American folklore, the belief was that May Day the fresh morning dew had the power to restore beauty. By washing their faces with the early dawn dews on May Day, young girls were assured they would marry the man of their choice.

I am also reminded that the term May Day is used for more serious purposes. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency by many groups, such as police forces, pilots, firefighters and transportation organizations. The call is always given three times in a row (“mayday-mayday-mayday”) to prevent mistaking it for some similar-sounding phrase under noisy conditions and to distinguish an actual mayday call from a message about a mayday call.

The mayday call signal originated in 1923 by Frederick Stanley Mockford (1897-1962), a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London. He was asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the word ‘mayday’ from the French word m’aidez.

However you choose to welcome this month of May, I hope your “May Day” is a good day for you.

Email Betty Heath at begeheath690@aol.com.