It's May 1st, y'all! But no one to dance around my Maypole. And I festooned it with ribbons and wreaths of flowers, and everything. The whole nine yards, so to speak. No takers.

The problem is, even though May 1st is a legal holiday in the US it is not a federal holiday, so nobody has it off. Otherwise you would all be dancing around your favorite Maypole, for sure. As elsewhere in the world where it is celebrated with weird Pagan rituals often by oddly dressed children.

Or maybe you would be demonstrating in the street, as in places where May 1st is celebrated as International Workers Day by nettlesome unionizers and still-disgruntled socialists who don't want to shave off their goatees and get real jobs.

In America it is officially Loyalty Day. Woo-hoo! You're going to the Loyalty Parade, right? Can't wait to dance around The Loyalty Pole, and wrap it in stars and stripes! It's fun! Hey, you signed The Loyalty Pledge, didn't you? You didn't? What are you, some kind of traitor? Al Qaeda sympathizer? Terrorist? I'm calling the FBI!

Whatever you do don't confuse these three ways of celebrating this special day. If you show up in your goatee with a list of grievances, the Loyalists will tie you to a Maypole with pretty ribbons, then dip you in nutella, and feed you to the squirrels. You think I'm joking.

Loyalty Day was established in 1921 (it was then called "Americanization Day") as an answer to the communist cooptation of the Pagan celebration of the giant phallus around which young maidens would dance. Seems like a natural fit for a communist workers day, doesn't it?

You know what I always say: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. May Day was perfectly fine the way it was, before the commies and the gun-nuts got to it. Now it's all full of bluster and bombast, which is so NOT May. That's April.

May is horny. May is full of spunk. Let's take May Day back!

I mean, the official purpose of Loyalty Day, according to the government, is "the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and ... the recognition of the heritage of American freedom." That actually sounds more like January. It sounds like a season where there's about six hours of daylight and you're locked indoors, buried under ten feet of snow.

And International Workers Day? That's so October.

May Day is May. May is not a grave or sensible month. It's giddy. It's silly. It's fragrant and flighty, with flowers flashing their sex organs for all to see. It's busy, but not with work. And it has no loyalty but to Nature.

But in keeping with the freedom theme I took a stroll—I assure you I was in no way coerced or compelled to do so—in the Public Garden, where citizens on lunch-break were staggering around like drunkards intoxicated by the beauty of it all:


After I'd finished classes I cycled over to my garden quick as I could, promptly tore off my clothes, and set about gardening like mad.

That's what May is all about.