May

You have just received the last issue of this school-year`s series of Friendship. May is a month which is also filled with a variety of re/letter days. In May, on the second Sunday of May, Mother`s Day is celebrated when all the mothers are treated in a special way. On Mother`s Day morning, some children follow the tradition of serving their mothers breakfast in bed. Another Possibility to treat mothers is to give them gifts which either have been made by the children themselves or the children buy some present in stores. Adults give their mothers red carnations, which are the official flowers of the day. If the mothers are deceased, adults may bring white carnations to their graves.

This year we will buy flowers for our mothers on May 11.
On May 30, Memorial Day is observed in the United States when American people remember all those who were killed in all the wars. The tradition of this holiday started in the United States in 1866, when the country was recovering from the long and bloody Civil War between the North and the South. Surviving soldiers were getting home, many of them being crippled for life. A drugstore owner Henry Welles from Waterloo in New York, had an idea. He suggested that all the shops in town close for an hour to honour the soldiers who were buried in the local cemetery. On the morning of the following day, the townspeople placed flowers, wreaths and crosses on the soldiers` graves. At about the same time, General Jonathan Logan planned another ceremony, for those soldiers who survived the war. He led the veterans through the town to the cemetery to decorate their comrades` graves with flags. It was not a celebration but a memorial. After two years, these two ceremonies were joined and northern states commemorated the day on May 30. In medieval times, May 1st was celebrated in England by crowning a May Queen and dancing round a Maypole. A maypole was a tall decorated pole round which people danced holding a ribbon tied to the top and making patterns with the ribbons as they were dancing. In the past almost all the villages in England had a maypole.

In the United States young children often dance around a maypole at school, and they often leave small baskets of flowers at a friend`s door to be found on May Day morning. The tradition of May poles is quite familiar in our countries, too. Our village boys used to build a maypole in front of the house of a girl they fancied.

And what about the meaning of this month? Its name is associated with the Goddess Maia who gave her name to this month. This famous goddess had an even more famous father, Atlas, whose mission (or fury?) was to carry the world on his shoulders.

On the last page of this issue you can learn some interesting facts about the remaining months of our calendar.