Valentine’s day week gifts for him

This article valentine’s day week gifts for him about the holiday at the start of May. For the labour-related holiday, see International Workers’ Day.

For the distress signal, see Mayday. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Maypole Dancing at Bishopstone Church, Sussex – geograph. May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. In 1889, 1 May was chosen as the date for International Workers’ Day by the Second International, to commemorate the Haymarket affair in Chicago and the struggle for an eight-hour working day. Maiouma was celebrated at least as early as the 2nd century AD, when records show expenses for the month-long festival were appropriated by Emperor Commodus.

A later May festival celebrated in Germanic countries, Walpurgis Night, commemorates the official canonization of Saint Walpurga on 1 May 870. May devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The best known modern May Day traditions, observed both in Europe and North America, include dancing around the maypole and crowning the Queen of May. Fading in popularity since the late 20th century is the tradition of giving of “May baskets,” small baskets of sweets or flowers, usually left anonymously on neighbours’ doorsteps. In the late 20th century, many neopagans began reconstructing some of the older pagan festivals and combining them with more recently developed European secular and Catholic traditions, and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival.

Belgium has celebrated May Day as a public holiday since 1948. The holiday is associated with snakes and lizards and rituals are made in order to protect people from them. The name of the holiday comes from the prophet Jeremiah, but its origins are most probably pagan. It is said that on the days of the Holy Forty or Annunciation snakes come out of their burrows, and on Irminden their king comes out. Old people believe that those working in the fields on this day will be bitten by a snake in summer. In western Bulgaria people light fires, jump over them and make noises to scare snakes. This day is especially observed by pregnant women so that their offspring do not catch “yeremiya”—an illness due to evil powers.

In the Czech Republic, May Day is traditionally considered a holiday of love and May as a month of love. Beltane, since bonfires are also lit on the same day. The event is similar to German Walpurgisnacht, its public holiday on April 30. On May 1st, couples in love kiss under a blooming tree. According to the ethnographer Klára Posekaná, this is not an old habit. Estonia celebrating the arrival of spring.