Sparkle Schoolhouse

Sparkle Weekly Wonderings: May Day

It’s time to drive the cattle to the summer pastures, everyone!

Yes - that is May Day. The day when we drive the cattle to the summer pastures. It is a very practical, pivotal and honoring day focused on a community’s most vital resource: cattle.

So at this point, in true Sparkle Stories fashion, I’d like to unpack that image and bring us forward to how May Day is employed around the world today.

In ancient times - before technology and money and countries - safety and well-being was directly connected to community and the natural world. Shelter was made from whatever was around. Food was whatever was grown or raised. Personal health was the same thing as Community Health: if the group was fine, you were fine. And the thing that best represented safety and wellbeing … was cattle. Lots of cattle meant lots of year round food, it meant fertilized crops, it meant heat, it meant clothing. So taking care of the cattle was literally taking care of the community and self.

So May Day was the day when the community would celebrate the abundant time of the year - summer! They lit fires, danced, feasted … and drove the cattle to the summer pastures.

Nowadays we still have some dancing and feasting and celebrating - but we also have protesting. In the late 1800’s May 1st was declared International Workers Day - the day when workers of the world were honored … by protesting for better conditions, wages and health. It honored the need for the same basic necessities that cattle once represented: food, clothing, wealth and sustenance.

Healthy Cattle then, is Healthy Work today.

So whether you are dancing around the maypole or marching on the picket line, we in Sparkle Land celebrate you and this pivotal day!