May Day Crafts, Poems and Stories for Dolls

Photo from New York Renaissance Faire at "Maypole
Meadow" by KenL.

       May Day is one of the holidays still being celebrated which was originated by European Pagans centuries ago. In fact, many Christians observed the holiday in the early 20th Century because it was not a "religious" celebration but one of several with origins in the changing of the seasons.

       It is in England that the first day of May was and still is a festival full of fun for the children as they welcome the coming of spring. (Modern version, 2022, at YouTube held on May 15th, for some reason...) A May Queen is crowned with flowers and children go to the woods to gather them and put them in specially made baskets. These they hang on a neighbor's door knob. Yet, as an old writer said "Their chiefest jewel is their May-pole." 

• Here a little girl crowned May Queen on May 12th, 2007
• A silent film of 1926 May Queen here.

       In olden times, the May-poles were painted in alternate stripes of yellow and black, but today a white pole is used. Tack the ends of various colored ribbons (they should be a yard longer than the pole), at the top of the pole and suspend a wreath of flowers. Decorate the extreme tip of the pole with gaily colored streamers or small flags. 

       An even number of persons are required for the dance; half the number takes the ribbon in the right hand and half in the left; they then face alternately right and left. When the dance commences, each dancer facing the right passes under the ribbon held by the one opposite facing the left; she then allows the next person going to the left to pass under her ribbon, and so on, tripping in and out, under and over until the ribbons are woven around the pole. Reverse the procedure to unwind the pole.

Crafts for Your Dolls To Celebrate May Day:

• The Four Flower Sister Paper Dolls: Hyacinth, Rose, Violet and Lily
• The Flower Children Pages - "The Little Cousins of This Field and Garden" by Elizabeth Gordon
• Get Ready To Learn and Teach At Flower Camp! Lessons and crafts for children and their dolls...
• Transform Your Lawn Into a Wildflower Meadow -  Your backyard can become a classroom.

Poems for The 1rst of May:

• Growing by Frances Camp Duggar
• The May-Day Piper by Anna Medary
• May Dance by Josephine Van Dolzen Pease
• Tomorrow's The First of May by Pauline More Wetzel
• A Fairy Necklace by Enid Blyton
• First O'May - lyrics adapted to sing for may "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush''
• Flower Fairies by Philip Bourke Marston
• Butterfly Airships by Alice E. Allen
• The Earth and Man
• The Rainbow Story by  E. Antionette Luques
• The Rainbow Land by Bertha Carman Herbst
• The Land of Fairy Tales 
• Rainbows by Dixie Willson
• Have You Seen Them?
• The Good Night by John Martin
• Fairies' Tea

Stories to Read On The 1rst of May:

• A-Maying by Maude Radford Warren
• The Endless Story by Friedrich Wilhelm Carove
• The Fairy Steeds by Frances G. Wickes
• The May-Day Queen by Georgene Faulkner
• Thumbelina by Hans Christian Andersen - The fairy princess born from a tulip...