It was the usual. Grace wore her painting clothes, not the white gloves or colorful Sunday Best, since that would be tomorrow. I wore the usual, a moderately appropriate summer aloha shirt, and since the nice couple from the Midway Museum Library were stopping by, I got out the old flight jacket to enhance the aura of the magical Day in May.
Here at Refuge Farm, we are closest to celebrating it the old way, in keeping with the Roman festival held in honor of Flora, Goddess of Flowers. We are close to nature here, after all, and since we only smoke outdoors, are keenly in tune with the changing seasons. This one was ushered in with some remarkable gusts of fresh clear air. They left the place brushed of extraneous cares, though focused on that one tall tree that appears to have snapped just above the root bunch and may take out part of the fence or the gate to the lunging ring down on the lower pasture.
Emperor Commodus insisted the change was good, and established a replacement festival called “Maiouma,” which was a “nocturnal dramatic festival, held every three years and known as Orgies, that is, the Mysteries of Dionysus and Aphrodite, not what you are probably thinking, but it sufficed in those centuries. Maiouma did have a reputation for licentiousness behavior that caused it to be suppressed.
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The Fall of the Empire and which our elected representatives may (or may not) have had a chance to readbrought in traditions from the old Northland, and the evening tradition of Walpurgis Night, commemorating the canonization of St. Walpurga. She was a Saxon abbess famed by the Christians of Germany for battling “pests, rabies and whooping cough,” as well as something known as “Witchcraft.”
Modern May Day traditions, observed both in Europe and here in the Virginia Piedmont, include dancing around the flagpole we placed by the top of the circular drive. The general decline of popular religious rituals provided an opportunity for neopagans, who had attempted to graft some of the older pagan festivals onto European secular and Catholic traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival.
We allow many liberties for the pagans on the property, since in the 19th century May Day was adopted as an International Workers’ Day, part of the movement for worker’s rights and the adoption of the eight-hour workday in the United States. That was a step to what we enjoy now, which was really strange.
At the Farm, we celebrated by submitting our taxes, a bewildering array of papers and documents to stay in compliance with the institutional requirements of the Federal Government, circa 2020. It is a special holiday, since the Government is adding $80 billion to the IRS budget, presumably to ensure the 1% pays their fair share, but which in our experience, means that there will be a lot more people hanging around looking for opportunities to make the rest of us pay our fair share for the stuff we may (or may not) have voted for. We don’t have the spare cash to contribute to the right people, and the Feds have restructured the War on Terror to include just about anyone.
In any event, I know we are all excited by the prospect of higher taxes, new Federal guidelines on curricula in the public schools and a bunch of other stuff no one has figured out yet. The Compliance Department at the farm is busier than ever to ensure we are enthusiastic and committed to the New Order, even if we don’t know what it is. The CD folks tell us it will be fine, but to stay off social media and watch out for the post office truck parked down by the mailbox.
(We warned the traditional dancers).
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
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