a naked and painted decorated tree, the maypole, in the village centers.
This night is called the Walpurgis night, a night when witches used to have their
feasts of union with the devil, riding to collect together on a broomstick.
It is a night connected to spring, to fertility, to sexuality and creation.
In Scandinavia similar traditions exist at midsummer night.
The dance around the maypole is a lost custom here, people from the village
meat around the maypole to eat and to drink beer.
These traditions are old.
As the day of the worker May 1st goes back to the Haymarket Affair, you can google this.
The maypole reminds of the Edda and many old mythologies in which
the tree of life connects sky, water and earth and all the spheres of time and space.
It is not difficult to feel and to imagine the deep truth of trees, rooted in the soil,
reaching and drinking water, growing upwards with life all around and in their high crowns,
breathing with another metabolism than ours through their leaves, photosynthesis,
giving us freely the oxygen we need to be alive.
Today the feasts will really be more about beer and time to waste than anything else,
the sky is grey, rain falls again and again, a constant drizzle keeps going.
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