May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii
May Day (May 1st), falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day, which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neo-pagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the un-farmable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations.
For the Druids of the British Isles, May 1 was the second most important holiday of the year, Beltane. Then the Romans came to occupy the British Isles. The beginning of May was devoted primarily to the worship of Flora, the goddess of flowers. May Day observance was discouraged during the Puritans. Though, it was revived when the Puritans lost power in England, it didn’t have the same robust force. Gradually, it came to be regarded more as a day of joy and merriment for the kids, rather than a day of observing the ancient fertility rights. May Day may be best known for its tradition of dancing the maypole dance and crowning of the Queen of the May.
By the Middle Ages, every English village had its Maypole. The bringing in of the Maypole from the woods was a great occasion and was accompanied by much rejoicing and merrymaking.
The tradition of celebrating May Day by dancing and singing around a maypole, tied with colorful streamers or ribbons, survived as a part of a British tradition. The kids celebrating the day by moving back and forth around the pole with the the streamers, choosing of May queen, and hanging of May baskets on the doorknobs of folks — are all the leftovers of old European traditions.
In Hawaii, May Day is also known as Lei Day, and is normally set aside as a day to celebrate island culture in general and native Hawaiian culture in particular. The first Lei Day was proposed in 1927 in Honolulu. Leonard “Red” and Ruth Hawk composed “May Day is Lei Day in Hawai’i,” the traditional holiday song. Originally it was a contemporary fox trot, later rearranged as the Hawaiian “hula” song performed today.
