49 Fun Facts About May Day

May Day falls roughly halfway between which two astronomical points of the Northern Hemisphere year?

Halfway between the spring equinox and midsummer solstice is why old European festivals treated May Day as the first day of summer, not mid-spring.

Walpurga, the saint behind Walpurgis Night, became a missionary abbess in Germany; where was she born?

England: Walpurga was born in Devon around 710, went to Germany as a missionary and became abbess of Heidenheim; the eve of her 1 May feast became Walpurgis Night.

At Beltane on 1 May, cattle were driven between two bonfires before being sent where?

At Beltane, cattle were driven between two bonfires for protection before being sent to summer pastures; people also walked between the fires or leapt the embers for luck.

Which German writer put a wild Walpurgis Night revel on a mountaintop into his most famous play?

Goethe sends Faust up a mountain with Mephistopheles for a Walpurgis Night revel in Faust, Part One (1808), and the scene made both the night and its peak widely famous.

In parts of Europe, bonfires are lit on Walpurgis Night to ward off what?

Witches were believed to hold their great gathering that night, so villagers lit hillside fires and made a din to drive them and other evil spirits away from homes and livestock.

Which of these is a traditional May Day custom in England?

Crowning a queen for the day is the centrepiece: a girl is chosen as May Queen and paraded through the village before the maypole dancing begins.

Britain's earliest recorded maypole is a birch in a 14th-century poem from Llanidloes, a town where?

Wales: in Gruffudd ab Adda's mid-14th-century poem a birch is cut down to serve as the maypole at Llanidloes and ends up standing, ruined, beside the town pillory.

Who banned May Day celebrations in England during the Interregnum, before Charles II restored them?

The Puritan parliaments went after the maypole itself: a 1644 ordinance called it 'a Heathenish vanity' and ordered parish constables to take every one down.

Which scientist obtained a felled Strand maypole to mount a giant telescope at Wanstead, Essex?

Isaac Newton bought the Strand maypole when it came down and sent it to his friend James Pound at Wanstead, where it held up a huge Huygens telescope lens lent by the Royal Society.

On May Morning in Oxford, crowds gather at 6 a.m. beneath the tower of which college to hear its choir sing?

Magdalen College Choir sings the Hymnus Eucharisticus from the top of its tower; so many revellers were hurt leaping from Magdalen Bridge into the shallow river that the bridge was shut on several May Mornings.

Morris dancing, a May Day fixture, takes its name from an old word meaning what?

Moorish: the 15th-century 'moreys daunce' meant Moorish dance, though why an English folk dance took the name is unclear; one old guess points to dancers blacking their faces as a disguise.

Padstow parades its Old and Blue Ribbon 'Obby 'Osses through the streets each May Day in which English county?

Cornwall's fishing port of Padstow follows each 'Oss and its club-waving Teaser through the streets all day, until the two meet at the maypole and are sung to their 'death' until next May Eve.

By the 19th century, the May Day figure Jack in the Green was chiefly associated with which trade?

Chimney sweeps made Jack in the Green their own in the 19th century, parading the leaf-covered figure to collect money on May Day; the custom grew out of 17th-century milkmaids' flower-decked garland processions.

On 1 May 1515, Henry VIII's royal guard appeared at a woodland breakfast disguised as whom?

Robin Hood and his men were the royal guard in disguise: they met Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in a wood at Shooter's Hill, where an arbour had been built for breakfast, a pageant and a masque.

In France it is traditional to give a sprig of which flower on 1 May, a custom traced to King Charles IX?

Lily of the valley is said to have reached the young Charles IX as a lucky charm around 1561, after which he handed sprigs to the ladies of his court each spring.

Nazi Germany made 1 May an official national holiday in 1933; what did the regime do the very next day?

Abolished free trade unions: having courted workers with a state-run 'Day of National Work', the regime crushed their independent unions a day later, all but destroying the German workers' movement.

Which British horror film builds to a May Day festival on a remote Scottish island?

The Wicker Man sends a devout mainland policeman to the island to look for a missing girl, only for him to learn on May Day that she was the bait and the islanders wanted him all along.

Germany's Walpurgisnacht celebrations are traditionally strongest in which mountain range?

The Harz: folklore made its highest peak, the Brocken, the night's great gathering place, so towns around the range still light hillside bonfires and dance into May.

In Sweden and Swedish-speaking Finland, the maypole is raised not on May Day but at which festival?

Midsummer is when Swedes raise the midsommarstång, a pole dressed in leaves and flowers, and dance around it, hopping like frogs to the song 'Små grodorna'.

Which homemade lemon-flavoured mead is the traditional drink of Vappu, Finland's 1 May carnival?

Sima is brewed at home with lemon, sugar and yeast; a couple of raisins go into each bottle, and when they float to the top the batch is ready for Vappu.

On 1 May, the Czech holiday of love, what do couples traditionally kiss beneath?

A blossoming tree, usually a cherry, apple or birch: the custom is thought to be only about a century old, perhaps inspired by Karel Hynek Mácha's love poem 'Máj'.

Bulgaria's May Day festival of Irminden involves rituals to protect people from what?

Snakes and lizards are the fear: villagers hold rites to chase them off, and folk belief warns that anyone who works the fields that day will be bitten in summer; the name honours the prophet Jeremiah.

The old custom of 'bringing in the May' meant going out to gather what?

Flowers and green branches were carried home to decorate buildings, a rite that may once have been meant to bring fertility to crops and livestock.

Edinburgh's modern Beltane Fire Festival, started in 1988, is held at which spot in the city?

Calton Hill was picked in 1988 as more central and easier to reach than Arthur's Seat, home of Edinburgh's older Beltane gatherings.

Which Welsh name for 1 May means 'first of summer'?

Calan Haf, 'first day of summer', is the Welsh May Day, also called Calan Mai; bonfires were lit for it, as they were for the Irish and Scottish Beltane.

In Hawaii, 1 May is celebrated as what?

Lei Day began on 1 May 1927 with a few people wearing lei in downtown Honolulu; the idea, floated by poet Don Blanding, caught on, and 'May Day is Lei Day' became the islands' slogan.

Which fading American May Day custom involved leaving small containers of sweets or blossoms on doorsteps?

May baskets of sweets or flowers were hung on a neighbour's door in secret, the giver knocking and running, since anyone caught in the act could be chased down for a kiss.

International Workers' Day commemorates an 1886 general strike and deadly rally in which American city?

The Haymarket affair took place in Chicago on 4 May 1886, at a rally called after police had killed strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company the day before.

The 1886 strike that led to the Haymarket affair was demanding what?

An eight-hour working day was the demand when American unions struck on 1 May 1886; that start date is why socialists later made 1 May the workers' day worldwide.

Which Roman goddess's festival, held from late April into early May, is often linked to the origins of May Day?

Flora, the goddess of flowers, was honoured with the Floralia, games that Romans began on the advice of the Sibylline Books in the hope she would protect the spring blossom.

What did Governor John Peter Altgeld do in 1893 for the Haymarket defendants still in prison?

Pardoned them: Altgeld freed Fielden, Neebe and Schwab and attacked the trial as unfair; public doubt about the verdicts had already led an earlier governor to commute two death sentences.

Which 1889 gathering in Paris chose 1 May as a worldwide day of worker demonstrations?

The founding congress of the Second International, held in Paris in July 1889, called for demonstrations on 1 May 1890, which went ahead that day across the US and most of Europe.

The United States and Canada mark Labor Day not on 1 May but on which day?

First Monday in September: President Cleveland, uneasy about May Day's socialist ties, signed that date into federal law in 1894, when a number of states already kept it.

During the Cold War, 1 May was marked in Moscow with military parades through which location?

Red Square was the stage: Politburo leaders stood atop Lenin's Mausoleum as troops and workers marched past, a parade meant to show off Soviet military might.

In 1955 Pope Pius XII placed a new feast on 1 May to counter communist May Day; whom does it honour?

Joseph the Worker got the day when Pius XII told Italian Catholic workers gathered in St Peter's Square on 1 May 1955 that he was creating the feast, a Christian claim on the workers' holiday.

Which patriotic US observance did Congress fix on 1 May in 1958 as a Cold War answer to May Day?

Loyalty Day was pushed by veterans' groups as a patriotic counter to May Day rallies, and federal law still asks the president to proclaim it every 1 May.

South Africa's law making 1 May a Workers' Day holiday came months after which event?

Democratic elections came first, in April 1994; the Public Holidays Act that followed made 1 May official from 1995, after workers had staged a mass stay-away in 1986 to demand it.

The UK-wide early May bank holiday dates from 1978, under a government of which party?

Labour, under James Callaghan, added the holiday in 1978; a 2011 government consultation floated moving it to October as a 'UK Day' or 'Trafalgar Day', but it stayed in May.

The distress call 'mayday' was coined in the early 1920s by the radio officer at which airport?

Croydon's radio officer, Frederick Mockford, was asked for a word every pilot and ground crew would grasp at once, because the Morse signal SOS was hard to make out when spoken over a radio telephone.

'Mayday' is the phonetic equivalent of a phrase in which language?

French: 'mayday' is usually traced to m'aider, 'help me', short for venez m'aider, 'come and help me'; a 1923 radio magazine said the word was liked because it sounded like the French.

By convention, how many repetitions of 'mayday' open a distress call?

Three times is the convention, 'mayday, mayday, mayday'; under air traffic rules the word then commands radio silence from everyone else on the frequency.

Which radio call signals an urgent problem that falls short of a full 'mayday' emergency?

Pan-pan flags an urgent problem such as engine trouble that is not yet life-threatening and warns other stations to keep the channel clear; the name comes from a word for 'breakdown'.

On Protomagia, 1 May, what do Greek families traditionally hang on the front door?

A wreath of flowers stays on the door or balcony until the feast of St John in late June, when it is thrown on a bonfire and burned.

Italy's May Day spring feast is called what?

Calendimaggio takes its name from the first days of May: singers called maggerini go from house to house offering verses of good luck in exchange for eggs, wine, food or sweets.

Edinburgh tradition sends young women up Arthur's Seat on May morning to do what?

Wash their faces in the dew: dew gathered on May morning was widely believed to beautify the skin, and in Ireland Bealtaine dew was likewise prized for keeping people young.

Which Gaelic festival, opposite Beltane in the year, marked the start of winter on 1 November?

Samhain began at sunset on 31 October, a night when spirits were thought to cross into the world of the living, and it is widely seen as one of the roots of Halloween.

At Vappu, students crown the Havis Amanda statue with a white cap in which Finnish city?

Helsinki's students open Vappu on the evening of 30 April by washing the Havis Amanda fountain statue in the Market Square and crowning her with a white student cap.

Why was the UK's early May bank holiday moved to 8 May in 1995 and 2020?

Both moves marked VE Day anniversaries: the 50th in 1995 and the 75th in 2020, when the holiday fell on Friday 8 May instead of the usual Monday.

In Bavaria, what do young men from rival villages traditionally try to do to a neighbour's maypole before 1 May?

Steal it: Bavarian villages guard their pole in a barn for days or weeks, because a village that loses it must win it back by treating the thieves to free beer and a feast.