May Day Celebrations

A long ago tradition of flower baskets and dancing around the May pole

By LAURA K. DEAL

Photos Carnegie Library of Local History, Boulder CO

As April moves into May, many people’s minds turn to Mother's Day, and the gifting of flowers associated with that holiday. But there is another May holiday deeply associated with the return of flowers in the spring. If you’re of a certain age, perhaps you celebrated the coming of spring on May 1st by making a paper May Day Basket as a child. I remember being in grade school in the 1960s and making a basket out of folded paper, tucking early blooming flowers and maybe a piece or two of candy into it, and then hanging the basket of flowers on the neighbor’s door, ringing the bell and running to hide. The recipient was expected to give chase and try to kiss the basket giver, though the chasing was more fun than the kissing at that young age, and there wasn’t very often an actual kiss.  

The custom was dying out in the 1960s, but was remembered by Franklin Folsom who was born in 1907 in Boulder. His father, Fred, coached CU football and taught at the CU Law School, and gave his name to both Folsom Field and Folsom Street in Boulder. The younger Folsom grew up to be a prolific writer and was one of the many subjects of the Maria Rogers Oral History Program conducted by the Boulder Public Library. He recalled the horror he felt on a May Day when he was six or seven, around 1913 or 1914, when his mother urged him to deliver a May Day basket to a neighbor girl.

“What you did on May Day according to my mother was pick flowers and take them to young ladies. Well, at the age of six or seven I wasn't quite up to that, but she insisted that I go out and pick Johnny-jump-ups, put them in a little basket and take them...where a new family had moved in with a nice young girl...I got out there and dropped this scrunched up little bunch of flowers on the front porch and fled. I cordially disliked that young girl – a totally irrational emotion – for years!” Chasing and kissing weren’t apparently involved in the tradition in the early 1900s, but just the thought of leaving flowers was enough to sour Franklin Folsom to the whole thing.

Boulder school children also celebrated May Day in the early 1900s with a pageant and dance attended by parents and neighbors. The girls wore white dresses and stockings, with flowers in their hair, and the boys wore white shirts and black pants. The children walked in procession past the spectators and danced around the May Pole. This dance, which involves weaving ribbons around a tall pole, has ancient origins in Europe, India, and elsewhere in the world. The May Pole dance, originally a ritual to ensure the earth's fertility, eventually evolved into a simple celebration of the return of spring. It’s a tradition that continues today in some schools, like Boulder’s Shining Mountain Waldorf School.

Irene Smith Lybarger, another old-timer in Boulder, told her oral history interviewer that she remembered “May Pole dances. It was about planting time for the farmers…at school we did a May Pole every year…with crepe paper. We’d wind the [flag] pole and have a big time with it.”

It wasn’t just the young children celebrating May Day, though. From 1911 to 1924, women at the University of Colorado put on a May Day Fete as a way to raise money for a campus building of their own. They wanted a dormitory, with their own dining hall and gymnasium, and they raised quite a bit of money over the years, but when the First World War got underway, all building resources were dedicated to the war effort, and the women eventually donated their money toward a pipe organ for Macky Auditorium.

These days, May Day celebrations are much harder to find. What can you do if you can’t find a dozen friends and a May Pole to dance around, or if you don’t want to ring your neighbor’s doorbell and run? You could always bring flowers or some candy to a friend or neighbor and tell them a little bit about the days in Boulder when May Day was celebrated with dances and baskets and flowers.