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9 min read

The origins of the folk traditions of May Day

Ancient origins

May Day, like most folklore customs, has its roots in the Dark Ages. The ancient Celts divided the year into four major festivals – Samhain (October 31st – November 1st), Imbolic (February 1st), Beltane (May 1st) and Lughnasadh (August 1st). Beltane, a Celtic word meaning ‘the fire (or fires) of Bel’ marked the beginning of summer for the Celts. The festival celebrated the coming of longer, lighter days, the rebirth and renewal of spring, and the hope for a plentiful harvest in the year ahead. Beltane is still celebrated throughout the UK today, though it is now better known as May 1st or May Day.

‘Heathenish vanity’ and pagan superstitions

The most well-known of Oxford’s May Day traditions is of course, Magdalen College’s choir singing Hymnus Eucharisticus from the top of Magdalen Tower at 6am to waiting crowds below. This tradition, however, has only been documented from about 1674 and marking May Day in Oxford goes back much further than that. More detail on Magdalen College’s role in the celebrations can be found on the Museum of Oxford blog here.

Pre-Christian traditions and pagan superstitions particularly relating to nature, still had a strong influence in the Middle Ages. The earliest accounts of Maytime celebrations mainly refer to ‘bringing in the May’ which is when people would go out into the fields and countryside to gather flowers and greenery to decorate their homes and other buildings. Green has long been associated with life and rebirth, which is embodied by The Green Man, an ancient pagan figure representing fertility and growth. A central figure in May Day celebrations throughout Northern and Central Europe, he is the male counterpart of the May Queen, and is often portrayed with acorns and hawthorn leaves, medieval symbols of fertility associated with spring.

If you look closely, the Green Man pops up all over Oxford and Oxfordshire, in churches, on college buildings and in street architecture. The Green Man features in churches as symbol of rebirth and resurrection, key ideas in Christianity, and serves as an example of how images from the ‘old religion’ were brought into medieval churches to tie them to the Christian faith.

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Piles of art supplies and material can not only be unsightly but also frustrating. To hold your stuff, you’ll need a reliable storage container. Not only will these neaten up your studio, they’ll also help you organize your possessions. A good bin should store your stuff securely and be light enough for you to comfortably handle or move around. Whether you’re looking for long-term storage for overflow or receptacles you need to access frequently, our picks below will guide your search.

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If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, we may receive an affiliate commission.

A light box is one of the most useful tools you can have in your studio. Resembling a stripped-down tablet, these slim devices illuminate flat surfaces from behind so you can place material on top for tracing or close observation. Use a light box, for instance, to weed vinyl, trace designs on watercolor paper, transfer tattoo illustrations, illuminate diamond painting, and view photo negatives. While you can find full, table-size light boxes, the market for portable ones is growing. These are typically engineered with LEDs to reduce eye fatigue, offer different brightness settings, and require connection to a power source to operate. Below, a roundup of our favorites.

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If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, we may receive an affiliate commission.

Making socks is one of the most popular knitting projects out there. To make the perfect pair, you’ll want to choose a skein of yarn specially spun for the task. Sock-making works best with a yarn that offers some stretch, and generally knitters prefer wool-nylon blends with at least 20 percent nylon for guaranteed elasticity. If you prefer thin socks, choose a fingering weight skein, and if you prefer thicker socks, choose a bulkier ball. Beyond that, you should choose the yarn that best suits your taste. Available in a plethora of material compositions, colors, and gradients, there’s plenty of sock yarn to choose from. Browse our roundup below of the best options on the market. 

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Getting tired of your same old paints? Make like the Ancient Greeks and Romans and give encaustic paints a try. In this method, which dates back more than 2,000 years, a pigmented mixture of beeswax and damar resin is heated until it’s supple enough to apply with a brush. Encaustics dry with a subtle, glossy sheen and are ideal for layered work, making them a great alternative to textured mediums like oils and acrylics. Also, most companies making encaustics today avoid using chemical solvents and synthetic adulterants, meaning they’re an environmentally friendly option. Below are five encaustic paints that we think deserve more buzz.

Jack Dorsey’s debut NFT was an image of the first-ever tweet posted on Twitter, which he founded in 2006. In March 2021, during the early days of the NFT boom, Dorsey’s tweet sold for $2.9 million after a competitive bidding battle in which Tron founder Justin Sun was a major player. Sun lost out to Sina Estavi, an entrepreneur who has since faced economic turmoil as his crypto-enterprises collapsed following his arrest last May.

Then, this month, Estavi listed the NFT for $48 million and tweeted that he would given 50 percent of the proceeds to GiveDirectly, a charity whose mission is to help impoverished people in certain parts of Africa. “Why not 99% of it?” Dorsey subsequently quipped.

But after Dorsey’s NFT went up for auction again this past week, no one bid higher than $280, effectively dropping the value of it by 99 percent. The highest offer now on OpenSea, where anyone can list an NFT, even if a bidding period isn’t open, is about $12,000, which is still a paltry amount. Is this a harbinger of the NFT market’s collapse?

For Jonathan Perkins, cofounder of the NFT platform SuperRare, the bungled sale is a symptom of the NFT market going through growing pains.

“There has been a lot of experimentation in the space, and I think we’re running up against the boundaries of speculation,” Perkins said, referencing the tokenization of tweets and the interest in PFP NFTs. He characterized the NFT market of 2021, especially of last summer, as one built on risk-taking behavior.