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This post was originally published as part of our newsletter, Just One Thing, on May 1, 2023. Subscribe here. (We're awesome about not spamming your inbox!)
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THE 1st OF MAY has specific significance to many cultures and countries.
For some, it is a time to celebrate the changing seasons with the May Day festival, or Beltane as it is known among Gaelic people. These celebrations may differ in a few localised details but incorporate several universal elements: seeking blessings for farm tools, butter churns and milch animals; eating customary dishes; and dancing around the Maypole — a pillar erected in an open field, decorated with flowers, vines and ribbons that youngsters hold on to and run to make up a riotous circumference. A May Day Queen may be crowned from among the young women in the community.
For others, the date speaks to the movement for workers' rights.
In America, however, these meanings of May Day converged in a strange way.
To begin with, the early settlers didn't encourage the celebration of May Day: its origins were considered far too "pagan" by the Puritans, not to mention its "unseemly" revering of fertility. The consequences of putting up a Maypole could be quite grave in these times, as at least one settler (who was forcibly shipped back to England for the "crime") learned. The festival faded out of public life altogether in the Colonies.
But by the late 1800s, the American elite — especially the reformers from among this class — had other worries on their mind. Droves of workers — immigrants — were flooding America's shores. When they weren't engaged in backbreaking toil, they would need some outlet for their entertainment and leisure. What if they took to vices or — gasp! — amusements that were deemed unworthy of the respectable citizenry of the Great New Nation?
The reformers pushed for a revival of the May Day festival as the refined, clearly superior alternative to these potentially dangerous debaucheries. Now, its pagan past was of less importance than its connection to a white/Anglo Saxon identity.
A second set of forces would further encourage a May Day revival in the US — for different reasons. On 1 May 1886, American workers went on strike for eight-hour workdays (at the time, those employed across industries typically had shifts that lasted for 10 hours or more a day, six days a week). The widespread push that it triggered for the recognition of workers' rights, the triumphs and tragedies of the subsequent movement(s), and what it ultimately resulted in, are beyond the scope of this newsletter to discuss; suffice to say that it culminated in May 1st being designated as International Workers' Day by the International Socialist Conference some years later.
But anything with even the slightest whiff of Socialism or Communism about it had become a cause for alarm in America (or rather, to the American government). This sentiment had grown in response to the labour movement of 1910, the two World Wars, the perception of the Russian "threat" and so on. Wanting to deflect attention from Workers' Day, the State began to promote the other occasion the date was associated with — May Day. And their campaign had a star: the May Day Cake.
Recipes and articles on "May Day Cakes" began appearing in newspapers and periodicals of the time, prompting people to celebrate the festival the old-fashioned way. These cakes, as food historian Katherine Hysmith notes in an essay, were uniquely American in their ingredients: "boxed cake mix; assembly in tube pans or tall, thick layers; and topped with traditional American buttercream — a mixture of powdered sugar, butter, and a little bit of cream... Later recipes suggest(ed) tinting the cake and/or the frosting in pale spring hues of green and rose". The tops of the cakes would also be decorated with figurines shown in the quintessentially May Day pose of dancing with ribbons tethered to the Maypole.
Hysmith observes that these articles, recipes and other endorsements for May Day Cakes began to make fewer appearances by the 1970s, even though the Soviet threat wasn't perceived as having eased. Today, the US celebrates its Labour Day in early September. But for most other places that mark the occasion, May Day continues to be invested with its pagan and modern meanings.
What People Eat (& Drink) On May Day:
Beltane Cake — Scotland, Ireland
Large cake baked with scalloped edge, containing an unpleasant (hidden) surprise. Whoever is served the unlucky piece is known as the "Beltane carline"; the crowd then pretends to put the hapless soul into the bonfire (only for others to "rescue" the person) and pelts him/her with eggshells. Beltane bannocks (whole oatcakes) are also prepared, but tend to be used in rituals.
Maiwein (May wine with sweet woodruff) — Germany
Fresh Milk — France
Tippaleivät or May Day Fritters (funnel cakes) and Sima (a fermented drink like mead) — Finland
Vasilopita (coffee cakes) — Greece
Butter and Beer — Britain
Eggs and Sweets — Italy
