Reclaiming England's May Day - an anticipation

Let’s have back the festival Cromwell’s puritan work ethic tried to kill. Let’s celebrate life and growth, nature and land, good things, fine people and what we share in this great land of ours

Today is May Day – that time when all the Communists and assorted fellow travellers, useful idiots and such like bang on about “international workers” and the revolution. We get to hear the Internationale sung (by the three or four folk who can still remember the words) and tales of the workers struggle are voiced. This is the day of labour – which of course makes it a holiday.

Well dear commies, just as I want my flag back from the racists, I want May Day back from your ghastly authoritarian creed. I want us to reclaim May Day from banner waving reds and self-important lectures about work and workers. I want May Poles, Queen of the May, Morris Dancers, song, sunshine and a celebration of our ordinary lives and our ordinary history.

May Day isn’t a festival of workers. May Day is a festival of fertility – an anticipation of Summer’s fecundity. An excuse to let our hair down a little, sing, dance, get drunk. It’s a day of traditions – whether the maypole, the hobby horse or the green man.

So put away your banners, your red flags. Get out your bells, straighten your beards, dress up fine and get with the magic of nature. Look about at the fresh green shoots, the skippety young animals, the blossom of apple, may and blackthorn and the glories of England around you.

Let’s have back the festival Cromwell’s puritan work ethic tried to kill. Let’s celebrate life and growth, nature and land, good things, fine people and what we share in this great land of ours. Let’s put away the destructive message of class war, of workers revolution, of communism’s cursed legacy.

Let’s have the English May Day back.

I wrote the words above way back in 2010 and I stall mean them. Indeed, with all the discussion of place and identity, reclaiming May Day from the communists and their fellow travellers becomes even more urgent. This year, for reasons unrelated to the arrival of May, our village is adorned with patriotic bunting. Rightly we’ll be marking - indeed celebraing - the 80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe. But part of me (and I know my wife would love it so much) wants the village respendent in bunting, prepared for a party every May.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, lambs are getting chubby on the fresh new grass, and everywhere is sprinkled with new shoots, flowers and smiling faces. I stood outside my back door yesterday evening listening to birds singing, sheep bleating in back field, the sound of hoofs on the lane and far off the lowing of some cows. It was better then peaceful, it was joyous, standing in God’s creation, in a beautiful place, just soaking in nature’s happiness.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,

Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.