You may have seen images or videos of people dancing around maypoles on May Day. Perhaps you’ve even found yourself twirling around one, clad in flowers, breathing in the fresh late spring air. It turns out there’s a lot of symbolism behind this practice—and it was even made illegal in parts of Europe at one point.
The History of May Day Celebrations
Many cultures across Europe celebrated the beginning of May—which marked the midpoint between spring and summer—with various rites and rituals rooted in nature. Some of these festivals involved traditions like gathering flowers and branches, crowning a May Queen and perhaps a May King, lighting bonfires, and yes, dancing around maypoles.
Some Gaelic cultures celebrated the holiday of Beltane on the first of May. This festival often involved lighting large fires, praying for fertility and protection in the year ahead, and gathering together. Across Northern and Central Europe, others celebrate Walpurgis Night on the final evening of April, followed by Saint Walpurga’s Day on the first. This festival is named after an 8th-century abbess believed to have healed many people of various illnesses, but it weaves in traditional folk beliefs, including tales about witches gathering and fires lit to ward off evil spirits. This holiday likely allowed people in these places to maintain their pagan traditions under the guise of celebrating a Christian saint.
How Did Maypole Traditions Start?
The exact origins of maypole dancing are not known. Many pagan traditions were passed down orally and thus, clear historical records of them do not exist. However, some historians believe that maypole dancing might have begun in Germany over 2,000 years ago, and may have made its way to Roman Britain, where it became an annual fertility rite.
Maypoles were popular across ancient Rome, where people often danced around trees that had been cleared of their branches and draped in ivy and flowers. This may have been part of the festival of Floralia, which honored an ancient Roman goddess of flowers, spring, and fertility. By medieval times, maypole dances were mainstream across Europe.
Maypoles and maypole dances likely had slightly different meanings across cultures. Some historians believe that this practice simply honored trees or celebrated the coming of summer. Others hold that maypoles represented the masculine principle and the dancers around the poles represented the feminine principle, and the dance itself symbolized the union of these two polarities.
Additionally, evidence of maypole dances appears in pre-Colombian Latin America and India. These may connect to older cultural rituals, or may have also been fusions of cultural dances and European practices that made their way across continents.
How Maypole Traditions Were Suppressed
In general, maypoles were seen to represent fertility, and couples sometimes honored May Day festivals with intimacy. This was, of course, unacceptable to the Puritans, who tried to suppress the celebration in Europe and largely succeeded for two centuries. Maypoles were even made illegal in England between 1644 and 1660, and many maypoles were often destroyed during this time.
However, at the end of the 19th century, Britain experienced a revival in interest in folk traditions, and some maypole traditions were resurrected. It is believed that some modern staples of maypole dances, such as the tying of ribbons around maypoles, may have stemmed from traditions established in the 1800s rather than ancient practices.
Maypole Traditions in the U.S.
Some British pilgrims who settled in the U.S. in order to escape religious persecution brought maypole traditions with them. One of them was Thomas Morton, who established a colony with his associate Captain Richard Wollaston in 1624. When Morton discovered Wollaston was selling residents into slavery, he incited an uprising, overtook the colony, and decided to name it “Merrymount” or “Mount Ma-re.”
On May 1, 1627, Morton decided to set up a maypole to celebrate the colony’s new name, and he invited settlers and Native Americans to join in the revelry. This—followed by a year of other activities that went against Puritan dogma, and yet another similar celebration the following May—led Plymouth commander Myles Standish to send Morton back to England in chains.
Still, the start of May had been established as a time of defiance in America, and this tradition continued. On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of American workers went on strike in order to fight for an eight-hour workday, and May Day has since become an international holiday that honors workers’ rights worldwide.
Maypole Traditions Today
Today, maypoles remain part of springtime celebrations around the world. Often accompanied by fairs and festivities, and frequently celebrated by schools and communities, they are key examples of ancient pagan practices that have made their way into the mainstream modern world. Additionally, some modern pagans and Wiccans have incorporated maypole traditions into their late spring celebrations.