Langos via leipzig: Pagan Mayday rituals

All along the Danube and the Romantische Straße we have noticed these very tall, stripped trees, standing forlornly now, bolted into place in the very centre of each village. These are May poles.

When I was a child we were taught to perform very complicated dances around a Maypole one May Day: crossing, winding, twirling, weaving, so that the long ribbons made intricate and extremely pretty patterns. The practise stopped as suddenly as it started at our convent. My guess is that someone told the nuns that dancing around a Maypole was either about the devil’s business or a pagan practise. Because we never did it again: tho’ it was huge fun. That kind of ribbon-dancing around a Maypole, though, is more an English tradition, with the ribbons hanging from a shorter pole.

The Germany tree pole is much taller, about a hundred feet, planed to straight perfection, hung more with decorative garlands, and in many villages, decked out with tillers bearing guild symbols and worker shields.

Erecting the Maypole on the 1st day of May each year has been a village effort and a village tradition going back five hundred years in parts of Germany, and does not appear to be stopping anytime soon.

Once erected the Maypole must be carefully guarded until the 1st May to prevent groups of lederhosen clad young men from nearby villages stealing it, and to forestall any attempt on their part to negotiate for its return over copious vats of food and barrels of drink.

On that first day of May the villagers gather together around the Maypole for the May feast and festivities that go long into the night.

That is just hours after the ladies of the village have carefully bathed the skin on their faces in the early morning Mayday dew -- to ensure their continued beauty.

No doubt another practise the nuns would think of as pagan.