Playworks sells toys that invite play and enhance early childhood development [fun for all ages]

Every month has its significant days. None, however, has more than May. We pause to show appreciation to our mothers on the second Sunday. This year that's 8 May. [Not that we should wait for Mother’s Day to appreciate our mothers, mind you. A loving mother deserves appreciating everyday.] Later, on the last Monday of the month, 30 May, we remember those who died in military service to our country and welcome the unofficial arrival of summer as we celebrate Memorial Day.

Other "days of May" include May Day on the first, when in times past children sang and danced around a May Pole festooned with ribbons and chose a May Queen. They also made and hung May baskets filled with flowers on the doorknobs of neighbors. All this merriment predates Christianity, melds practices of the Druids of the British Isles and the Romans and basically celebrates fertility and the renewal of nature that spring heralds. For the Celtics, May Day marked the end of winter, the unfarmable season in the Northern hemisphere. For Romans, their festivities focused on Flora, their goddess of flowers.

Puritans in America naturally frowned on such observances which, with the emphasis on fertility, could become raucous. Think of Camelot with its reference to that "lusty month of May." Still in simpler times and more rural environs, the observance remained popular among school children.

Interestingly, Hawaii began celebrating May Day as Lei Day, in 1928, with everyone encouraged to wear lei. Festivities include lei making demonstrations, exhibits and contests, music, and hula. I like how this celebration of renewal keeps moving from culture to culture, adapting to new places and times.

I also discovered that Florence Nightingale's birthday, 12May, is International Nurses day which got me to thinking about my mother. Here we are celebrating mothers, and I am amazed by how many ties mine has to these other "days of May." My mother, Phillippa, is 90 years old. She was named for her mother’s brother Phillip who died in World War I. Later she became a nurse and volunteered to serve as a nurse in the US Navy during World War II.

She remembers the merriment of May Day in her rural community~the fun and joy of singing and dancing around the May Pole, picking posies and creating baskets from doilies and pipe cleaner hangers. She taught us how to make May baskets and once created miniature May Poles as centerpieces for a luncheon. No longer able to tend a garden, she takes pleasure in the flowers her children plant and tend for her. Hmm, I think I need to arrange delivery of a May basket to her door. Why not revive a tradition by borrowing a May Day tradition for Mother’s Days?