Erin FoxMay is here and the woods are sprouting with wild flowers just waiting to be picked for a May Day arrangement. We have different feast days marking the arrival of the next season. St Brigid’s Day marks the beginning of spring in Ireland. May Day bids farewell to the dark winter months and welcomes the bright summer months to come.
There are many different traditions surrounding May Day celebrations. In some communities, May bushes were decorated with flowers and placed in people’s front gardens or in the centre of the town or village. Dancing around a May pole, bonfires and festivals with music and dancing were also extremely popular in celebrating the month of May.
Flower gathering is the most popular activity. In some traditions, the flowers were picked on the eve before May Day and assembled into posies, garlands, crosses or crowns. Sometimes children would leave flowers at their neighbours’ doorsteps to bring good luck and fortune to their lives. Yellow flowers such as primroses, marigolds and buttercups were commonly used in floral arrangements as they reflected the sun and summertime.
You can use any flowers you wish for your May Day creations, particularly cherry blossoms and bluebells.
The most important tradition is crowning a statue of Our Lady to recognise her as the Queen of Heaven. To this day, many people still create a grotto with a statue of Mary either in their homes or at the centre of the community and lay flowers at her feet. A mossy piece of bark is the perfect backdrop for your own miniature grotto.
Change the flowers
Line the inside of the bark with a small glass jar filled with wild flowers and flowers from the garden if you wish. Place a statue of Mary in the centre and then scatter more flowers at her feet. Change the flowers regularly throughout the month. You can place the piece of bark and the statue of Our Lady in a flower bed, so that you won’t need to pick flowers every few days.
If you are keeping the grotto indoors, choose somewhere you will pass by every day to place the May altar. Place it beside your bed next to your rosary beads so you can recite a decade of the rosary every night throughout the month.