May Day!

 The first day of May is considered "May Day", that is celebrated all over the world.  I suspect that's because it really marks the end of cold weather (depending on location, of course).

I will note that the voice signal for distress has also been anglicized into "May Day!  May Day!  Send help immediately!"  The term actually comes from the French "M'aidez" (pronounced "may day") which literally translates into "help me".  (On a side note, I didn't realize until I became an amateur radio operator that, although "may day" and "SOS" are both signals of distress, SOS is only used for water vessels.  It means Save Our Ship...and interestingly can be expressed with one of the simplest Morse Code signals ever: ... --- ...            Dih dih dit, dah dah dah, dih dih dit.  Kinda musical!  But I digress.)

Back to the day/date.  When I was a child, I somehow got wind of a vanishing tradition of secretly leaving May Baskets at the doors of neighbors.  My mother had to have been the one to tell me about it.  We moved around so much that we never really had neighbors for long, but I was such a starry-eyed child, I liked the creative angle of making May Baskets.  (Apparently, my sister was part of this process, too.)  We made baskets out of paper and put anything we could scrounge into them.  Flowers, goodies, little messages...  I was always a little embarrassed at the sparse things I put in mine, largely because we didn't exactly have a lot of stuff stashed around the house to use, but I was gung ho.  (I suspect there were a lot of dandelions in my baskets.  It was the thought that counted!)  Kept us busy.  Kept us mindful of others.  And so, we did what we did.  I'd like to see the old tradition come back.

I am reminded of the song from Camelot, "The Lusty Month of May".  Listen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg4YrOlAkds

Happy May Day, everyone!