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Seasons

For skywatchers, April and May are going to be blockbusters.

By Fred Schaff

If you're looking for that wonderful thing called variety, you certainly can find it in nature. And especially in spring. Among our topics in this column for April and May are tornadoes, spring peepers, eclipses, and May Day—the holiday that leads off the month of flowers.

Of May and May Day

After April, the ficklest month, comes sweet May. Weather historian David Ludlum has suggested that this lovely month should have been named Flora, after the Roman goddess of flowers, rather than May, after Maia, another Roman goddess of spring and fertility (actually Maia was originally a Greek goddess).

The halfway point of spring falls on May 6, though in the northern United States and southern Canada, frosts and chilly weather are not uncommon early in the month. So it is not fair to say that the entire month is abloom everywhere. Memorial Day was put at the end of May to make sure that even in the northernmost United States there would be plenty of flowers to lay on graves of fallen soldiers.

As usual, it is not quite at the mathematically accurate halfway point of a season that the "cross-quarter day" gets celebrated. In spring, the cross-quarter holiday is May Day, the first of May, a day of merriment and many innocent and sweet traditions. Some are now little remembered: for instance, the custom of having maidens wash their face with May dew gathered at dawn on May Day to assure beauty.

The dance around the Maypole and the selection of a May Queen are traditions of old England that even flourished in parts of the United States until early this century. Another delightful tradition that has survived to the present (in my wife's family, for one!) is the custom of children rising early to gather wildflowers and secretly leaving them on the doorstep of a friend, neighbor, or mother. They knock, run, hide, and watch!

Of course, long ago, the first of May was also the occasion for the dark revelries and human sacrifices of the Celtic holiday Beltane, fire of the god Bel. This occurred halfway through the Druidic year that began on Samhain, the predecessor of Halloween. Whereas Samhain marked the beginning of the year at its low point in the cycle of the living world, Beltane marked the middle of the year when growth was at its strongest.

Diagrams for dusk and dawn show scenes about 45 minutes after sunset or before sunrise, as viewed from 40° north latitude (approximately correct for the U.S. and southern Canada).
-Adapted from Sky Calendar, Abrams Planetarium, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 98824.

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