May 1st

Beltane.

And the year turns and now it is nearly May. Beltane. The time welcoming the hotter sun (“fires of Bel”) and good planting and wishing for a healthy harvest. I sometimes think of May as the first summer month in the northern hemisphere but this is apparently uncharacteristically optimistic as I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this is incorrect. But it is the first time that you spy in the evening sun the insects that swallows swoop down to collect. When it is warm enough some days to lounge around in the garden doing some weeding or sowing some seeds, or just admiring the colours on brick walls.

Beltane. When fires were lit through the ages to mark the beginning of the old farming calendar, and long days continued to lengthen, and there was hope that everything would come to fruition in the Autumn. It is the opposite of the darkening time of year, Samhain (October 31st) in the Celtic calendar. The energy of the earth at Beltane is coming alive to do its job. We can see it all around us, things are sparking into life and colour has already started to return. People get their lawnmowers out if they are keen. Bluebells appear in meadow and woodland, and gardens come alive with flowers that are fleeting but blazing at this time of year. The dying of daffodils herald summer. People suffering from SAD heave a sigh of relief that there is some daylight to lift their minds and hearts, and may well they. This year has felt like a long dark winter, for many reasons that probably don’t just include the weather and lack of daylight; at an overview level the world looks grim.

The celebration of the coming of May seems to be less of a thing now, which is a shame. It links us to the natural cycle of the year and reminds us that there are bigger things, that all this time nature has been biding its time and watching and waiting. It will attend to the order of things even if we will not. I am old enough to remember maypole dancing in school although I don’t think it’s a thing now. At my school we had a maypole large enough to fit the entire class around, and it was a joyous thing, our little hearts were filled with accomplishment at how our skipping covered the pole with intricately weaved colourful ribbons. We didn’t have May Queens or Kings as I guess that would have created too many arguments and cross parents but I hear that some schools have May ‘persons’. It doesn’t have quite the same ring does it?

But all these things are about the same thing - celebrating life and colour and the coming of sun (fire), and remembering that actually we have very little to do with it really apart from the planting, and nature manages to do quite a lot of that by itself, hence the various rituals appeasing ancient gods. Beltane is about gently putting us in our place, and giving us reasons to remember it.

What are you doing to remember your place in nature? And how does your bit of the world look?