May Day Fun

So I am not all about formal rituals on wonderful holidays like May Day; it just isn’t for me. I think some of the rituals that others choose to do are absolutely lovely, but for me I like to sit back, relax and do a few special traditions or activities.

May Day has always been very special for me. Every year growing up, my mother and I would make flower baskets out of construction paper, fill them with flowers and leave them on my grandma’s and other folks door knobs. Then we would ring the bell and ……………………RUN! It was a wonderful and magical day and we would end by visiting with my grandma. May Day was my grandma’s favorite holiday. She seemed to just glow with happiness every first day of May. Sometimes I wonder if she wasn’t secretly witchy.

Gum Grandma and Me

May Day is the one pagan holiday I was able to celebrate as a Catholic and I didn’t feel guilty about it (mostly because my mom and grandma loved it so much). As I transitioned out of Catholicism, I learned about Beltane and its meaning. But I could never transition to calling it Beltane. “May Day” just has too much personal meaning for me to call it by any other name.

This is how happy I was each May Day. :)

May Day has always been a very lucky day for me as well. In college, a number of witchy friends and I made a May Day pole. As we collapsed from rounds and rounds of dancing and weaving, I laughed, settled into the grass, looked down and saw a four leaf clover. Well, let me say, that baby was MINE! LOL

I was hoping to have a bonfire tonight (well, modestly contained fire) but it’s not very sunny or warm or dry this weekend. So I decided to bring some of the green wonderfulness outside indoors. I decided to paint an old spaghetti jar (leftovers from our table displays at our wedding). As I got going I had the most wonderful idea. I decided to paint the Goddess symbol on one side of the glass jar and carefully line up the God symbol on the other side. So when you look at the jar a certain way, the two symbols line up! Here are a few photos of the jar once painted.

Then I took my bare little feet (and I mean little, like size 5.5) outside to walk around on the wet grass. We have some serious onions invading our yard for years now, can’t contain them and we don’t want to use chemicals so I didn’t feel too bad cutting a bunch of onion leaves for my May Day jar. Then I snipped two tulips. We have lots of tulips (thanks to my step-grandpa’s obsession with them – we bought my grandma’s house from her – the other grandma, not the May Day grandma although I love them both). Even though there are lots of tulips, only a few have actually opened and bloomed. I felt guilty cutting those that have turned yellow but haven’t opened yet. So I cut the only two I knew had at least opened and seen the sun. Add in a few tulip leaves and we have the wonderful May Day jar shown below.

From there, the May Day jar made its way into my office/sacred space. I tried the May Day Jar out on my altar but it didn’t fit very well and just didn’t “feel” right. So it moved to an impromptu casual altar on my dresser. And I like it much better. There is something nice about a casual altar space.

Even Happy, my stuffed reindeer got into the May Day Fun

Oh yeah, and for those who remember me saying I got a wonderful quartz with pink tourmaline, here’s a photo of the lovely! And that's my youngite in the front.

Happy May Day to one and to all!