May: The month of flowers and blooming

May is the fifth month of the year, one of three months of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, according to the Julian and Gregorian calendars and has 31 days. The month of flowers and blooms. In  popular perception it is paretymologically associated with sorcery and magic. That is why the admonitions that no weddings should take place in May, nor any serious work in this month (“In May, you should not plant a tree, you should not marry a child” says a Greek proverb).

It was originally the third month of the ten-month Roman calendar (Majus) and was named, according to the prevailing notion, from the Latin Maius, short for Maius mēnsis, “Maia’s month.” But who is this Maia? The Greek goddess Maia was one of the Pleiades, the companions of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, a goddess of fertility that was honored with the sacrifice of piglets on her altar.

This Maia was the mother of Hermes, the messenger of the Gods. But the Romans had yet another goddess named Maia, who just happened to share a name with the Greek goddess.

The Greek goddess became conflated with the Roman Maia Majesta, a goddess of fertility and spring—appropriate for the growth and increase we see in the month of May.

The name May may also come from:

From the Latin word major, which is the comparative degree of the adjective magnus = great. (Plutarch)

From the Latin word majestas = majesty. (Ovid)

From the “majores”, the glorious ancestors of the Romans, to whom it was dedicated.

In Ancient Rome, in the month of May, the Floralia (Floralia), the Roman fertility rites, were celebrated in honor of Flora, goddess of vegetation and spring, the Lemurias (Meilichia), for propitiating the dead. On May Day, the Romans honored the Good Goddess (Bona Dea), with festivals, in which only women participated.

The May holidays in ancient Athens

In the ancient Attic calendar, May corresponded to the second fortnight of the month of Munichia and the first fortnight of the month of Thargilion. During this time in Athens, the following were celebrated: Olympias, in honor of Zeus, with equestrian competitions, sacrifices and meals in the area of Ilissos, Munichia, in honor of the goddess Artemis, on the peninsula of Munichia (today’s Kastela), with mainly teenagers participating. Thargilia, in honor of Apollo, dedicated to the purification of the city from defilimenrt [miasma], which was ensured through purification rites.

Defilers were people who were chosen based on their wickedness, poverty or ugliness. They were paraded as scapegoats through the streets of Athens to absorb the rampant evil and then exiled.

May in folklore

Although May is generally considered to be the last month of Spring, it is actually the middle of this flowering season since Summer does not begin until twenty days after the end of May, on June 21. May is indeed “a month of joy and worship of flowering vegetation, with beliefs and customs of a timeless nature”, such as the traditional custom with the May Day wreath that decorates the door of homes until June 24, when it is burned in on bonfires for the feast of St. John.

Popular superstitions consider May “enchanted” so weddings and serious work are avoided during it, hence the proverb “In the cursed place, it rains in the month of May”. All peoples, however, on May Day celebrated the flowering of Nature and the beginning of “good times”.

And while popular proverbs, such as, “My May, cool May and blooming April” and “May has a name and April flowers”, try to recall us to order, childhood memories do not allow us to do so. And so we continue to sing: “May has arrived/step forward quickly/to welcome it/children in the countryside”