May Day! May Day!
We’re all familiar with May’s most popular holidays: Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day, and Memorial Day.
But the month is also chock-full of obscure, unofficial (and dare we say, underappreciated) celebrations. Let’s examine a few of them.
The Original Pole Dance?
For more than 2,000 years, maypole dancing has been a May 1 ritual to celebrate nature, fertility, and the coming of spring.
Still popular in England, Germanic European and Nordic countries, modern maypole dances no longer feature young virgins presenting themselves in a fertility rite.
Rather, today’s iteration of the dance innocently depicts the purity of its youthful (male and female) participants.
Few Americans dance around a maypole these days, although Druids in the Pacific Northwest are attempting to resurrect the practice.
Grin and Bare It
No Pants Day is an unofficial holiday that falls on May 3 this year.
Celebrated mostly in the United States, it encourages participants to spend their day sans pants—publicly wearing only undergarments on the lower part of the body—and to act as if doing so is perfectly normal.
Not to be confused with No Pants Subway Ride Day, which is held in January, No Pants Day originated in 1985 or 1986 by a small comedy organization at the University of Texas-Austin, known as the Knighthood of Buh. Club membership is open only to “Freemooses.”
Celebrants of No Pants Day are primarily college students. (Go figure!)
May the Fourth Be With You
Arguably the most nerd-friendly holiday of the year, Star Wars Day (May 4) is now internationally recognized. It’s when sci-fi aficionados worldwide can channel their inner geek to commemorate the most successful and beloved film franchise of all time.
One of the most popular ways to celebrate is to dress in costume and watch one or all of the 12 Star Wars films.
If you’re still feeling the vibe once the day is over, take heart. Talk Like Yoda Day is May 21. The grammar teacher’s worst nightmare, “Yodish” follows the sentence structure of object-subject-verb instead of the traditional (English) order of subject-verb-object.
Try it! Drive your friends and family crazy it will.
Sock It to ‘Em
One of life’s most perplexing mysteries is the lost sock. Despite our best efforts to keep the pair together, one of them inevitably ventures into the netherworld, never to be seen again.
Young Jerry Seinfeld probably said it best:
Hence, Lost Sock Memorial Day, May 9. Celebrants are encouraged to discard all their single leftover socks and observe a moment of silence for those socks that didn’t make it.
Sources:
Featured Image: Adobe, License Granted
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History.com
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