Traditional May Day Celebrations
May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations.
As Europe became Christianized, the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were merged with or replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and All Saint's Day. In the twentieth and continuing into the twenty-first century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.
Read more about this topic: May Day
Famous quotes containing the words traditional and/or day:
“Americans want action for their money. They are fascinated by its self-reproducing qualities if it’s put to work.... Gold-hoarding goes against the American grain; it fits in better with European pessimism than with America’s traditional optimism.”
—Paula Nelson (b. 1945)
“A woman spent all Christmas Day in a telephone box without ringing anyone. If someone comes to phone, she leaves the box, then resumes her place afterwards. No one calls her either, but from a window in the street, someone watched her all day, no doubt since they had nothing better to do. The Christmas syndrome.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)