Holiday De-Traditions

A LOT has changed since this was taken

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: There’s much talk, this time of year, about traditions. And why not? The traditions we hold to year after year are a vital part of making the holidays what they are. Unlike other events, we don’t crave novelty or uniqueness; we want the same decorations, the same songs, the same people. Even if you don’t particularly like Aunt Millie’s green bean casserole, you still make it. Even though your mother-in-law drives you bonkers, you still drive two hours to spend the day at her house. 

 

But, as author coach Becca Syme likes to say, what if you… didn’t?

As timeless as they seem, our holiday observances have to change over the years. We get married and have to accommodate our spouse’s dumb traditions along with our own beautiful and meaningful ones. We move out of state, and for some reason, Mom isn’t as interested in cleaning and cooking for us and our sisters and our cousins and our aunts (our sisters and our cousins, who number in the dozens!) The ice dancing show we always took the kids to now costs - are you kidding me? A hundred bucks per ticket?

Then there are the traditions you kick to the curb because you realize the work isn’t worth the payoff. I stopped making Christmas cookies the year I found myself sobbing in the kitchen at 2am, taking batch after batch of confections out of the oven. My kids and my husband would much rather have those white-chocolate-covered Oreos they put out this time of year; why was I killing myself over pfeffernusse? 

 

 

 

Or wrapping presents with fancy paper and bows and ribbons. Yes, it looks pretty, but you know who doesn’t care? Everyone else in the house except you. That paper is like Gypsy Rose Lee’s costumes: it’s just an impediment to the good stuff underneath. I, myself, switched to bags and tissue paper; now not only super easy - pop the present in, cover it with tissue, tie the handles with a bit of ribbon if you don’t trust the recipient  not to peek - but I also get to bask in the glow of righteous eco-saving, since they get reused over and over and over again.

The latest tradition that I suspect is about to disappear? Our Christmas Day dinners for twenty to forty. Obviously, we put this on hold during the pandemic, but in the years since 2020, there have been changes besides masking and hand sanitizer. Many of the now-adult kids of the families who would come have moved out of state, and our former guests are making their own decisions on where to spend the holidays. Some friends are less than enthused about being indoors in winter crowded together with people who, lets face it, could be carrying God-knows what kinds of germs. 

One of THREE tables for the big parties!

Most importantly, I've realized the sheer amount of work I need to do when I don’t have a husband and willing teens/college kids to pitch in. Thanksgiving dinner for seven felt like a LOT. It took me two days to clean up, and we didn’t even have any wine glasses to wash. (Sober celebration for the win!) Youngest really wants to resume the huge get-togethers, but I couldn’t help but notice that as I carried in plates and platters from the dining room and sorted napkins to be laundered, she sat in front of the fire and scrolled on her phone. 

This year, we’re only doing six for Christmas, and I feel fine with that. I’m thinking I can wait until Youngest has her own large house with lots of space, and let her resume the enormous dinner party tradition. I’ll be happy to show up with a dish and a smile, and leave all the rest of the toil and trouble to her. I might even bring Aunt Millie’s green bean casserole.

How about you, dear readers?

Ugly Holiday Sweaters by Jenn McKinlay

 Jenn McKinlay: Show of hands, who owns one or more of these  delightfully over the top gems? 

This pic is actually from a jigsaw puzzle and I think those are cookies, which is probably the best way to display such holiday hoopla as then you can eat it and destroy the evidence instead of having it live in your closet forever.

Why am I mentioning holiday sweaters? Well, because someone got the great idea to have an ugly holiday sweater party at her friend's book signing. (Yeah, it was me.) Who is the unfortunate friend? Paige Shelton as we celebrate her latest release Winter's End. And, of course, we had to drag in Kate Carlisle as well. 

So, if you want to see our horrific sweaters, we'll be at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore at 2 PM MST today (Saturday, the 3rd) where we are giving prizes to randomly chosen sweater wearers or you can catch the live stream where we are also giving prizes to randomly chosen viewers who post a pic of their sweater in the comments: 

On Facebook: www.facebook.com/thepoisonedpenbookstore/live  or 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTbRuLNmD8EhT4WrGGMVW-w

FUN FACT: Ugly holiday sweaters began in the fifties and were called "Jingle Bells Sweaters". I love that! Here's more history if you're interested: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ugly-christmas-jumpers/index.html

Now confess, Reds and Readers, who owns one? Are you a lover or a hater?

To Tradition or not to Tradition by Paige Shelton

Jenn McKinlay: It's always a great day when we get to chat with our friend Paige who has a new Alaska Wild mystery coming out on Dec 6th! 

This is the fourth in the Mary Higgins Clark Award nominated series and it sounds thrilling! 

BUY NOW

The fourth installment in the gripping, atmospheric Alaska Wild series, Paige Shelton's Winter's End.

It’s springtime in Benedict, Alaska, and with the warmer weather comes an unseasonably somber local tradition...the annual Death Walk. At the end of each brutal winter, citizens gather downtown and then break into groups to search the community for those who might have somehow gotten stuck at home. Beth Rivers sets off with her friend Orin and dog Gus, toward the cabin of an elderly resident, intending to check on him.

When they reach the cabin, the old man is alive, but not in the best shape. Beth stays with him while Orin hurries to town for help, but it’s not Orin who returns. Gril comes back with shocking news, and it soon becomes clear that Orin has also vanished. When they discover that their friend has been doing some top-secret research, they start to worry he’s been exposed, or worse.

Meanwhile, Beth continues on her own search, for her father, who allegedly is alive in Mexico, but won't return her calls. Still, she's making progress in healing from her own trauma, though can't quite shake the feeling she's being followed...

Paige: Happy Holidays to everyone! Thanks to Jenn and all the Jungle Reds for letting me stop by today. 

About ten years ago I was talking to a friend about the holiday traditions of my childhood. All those (long ago) events centered around my grandparents; my family, aunts, uncles, and cousins meeting at my grandparents’ small Missouri home, where my grandmother would make sure we all ate delicious food, even if it meant we had to eat in shifts because the kitchen was so small. I loved those days. After my grandparents passed, we all floundered for what to do and where to go for holiday celebrations. No one’s house or cooking, or anything really, was close to the same type of down home hospitality my grandparents offered. Mostly, the rest of us ended up not doing much of anything for a lot of years. My friend, the one I was talking to about ten years ago, said, “That’s the problem with traditions. They can’t go on forever, because nothing goes on forever. You should work to make different memories with each new trip around the sun or you’ll just be stuck in that melancholy mode of missing what used to be.” 

Well. I was quiet for a long moment as I worked through her words. I had to get past a few moments of “what’s wrong with her?” and “how dare she?” I realized quickly, of course, that she meant no disrespect to my memories. And much to my dismay, I finally concluded that she might be on to something. At least partly. 

I am grateful for those childhood traditions, but after my grandparents were gone, they would have wanted the rest of us to find new ways to enjoy ourselves without them, not just be sad they weren’t there. Even if it was something as simple as going to a movie one year, going for a hike the next. Mix it up. Make new memories that would only complement the old traditional activities. 

Since that conversation, I’ve tried to do exactly that – make sure new things, even small things, are a part of any of my family get togethers. It’s given me a sense of purpose, and I think everyone has had a good time. It has given us all a chance to partition the years as well – they don’t all mix into one similar picture. There was that year we all visited the observatory, then the one with the zoo. That year we watched a parade, or the one where we had Italian food instead of turkey. 

This year for Thanksgiving, my son, daughter-in-law, and brand-new grandbaby boy visited us in Arizona. I am so fortunate to have these wonderful people in my life. I’ll never be as amazing as my grandmother, but I can cook okay enough. We ate good food and, activities being dictated by the almost brand new human, spent lots of time inside cuddling the baby. Next year, we’ll do some of the same things, but I’ll work to come up with something different for new memories. Grandbaby’s age will probably dictate things for a while, and I love that, feel fortunate for it. 

Before they arrived, I’d cleaned and rearranged some pictures. I found a tiny photobooth picture of my grandparents and my mother when she was a brand new baby. I set the small picture on a shelf, leaning against another framed picture. As I was cleaning up after son, DIL, and baby left to go back to Omaha, I closed a sliding door near the shelf. That sepia-toned picture fluttered up and landed on the floor at my feet, face up. Of course, it was probably just the wind from the closing door, but I’ve decided that I’m going to think of it as a lovely hug and an approving fist bump from the people I still miss and love to this day. Tradition or not, we all need a little magic during the holidays, right? 

What about you, Readers, do you have traditions that you've kept or ones that you've had to let go of?

Speaking of new traditions – this coming Saturday, December 3, at 2:00 PM, Arizona time (currently the same as Pacific Time) Jenn McKinlay, Kate Carlisle, and I will be at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale to kick off my new book, the fourth in the Alaska Wild Series: Winter’s End. We’ll be in ugly Christmas sweaters, and we encourage others to join in, either live, or via the links below. We’ll be awarding a prize to our favorites.

Links to the event:

http://www.facebook.com/thepoisonedpenbookstore/live

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTbRuLNmD8EhT4WrGGMVW-w

Paige Shelton is the New York Times Bestselling author of the Farmers' Market, Country Cooking School, Dangerous Type, and Scottish Bookshop mysteries. She's lived lots of places but currently resides in Arizona. Find out more at www.paigeshelton.com

Rhys on Traditions.

  RHYS BOWEN: We arrived home to California after the winter in Arizona and immediately started a big clearing out of closets and desks. Do I really need this? How many pens does John actually need? Why does he need to keep a flag from Sri Lanka? He is never going to fly it over our house (I hope).

This process has made me think of all the things we don’t use any longer. Jelly molds in the shape of a rabbit?  Uh no. Birthday candles (no. Buy when needed). Frosting in different colors (ditto). But it has also made me realize that the festive side of life seems to have disappeared. I bought a women’s magazine for the plane ride and it had all these wonderful ideas for Easter decorations–dying eggs, making centerpieces, cakes in the shape of a lamb or a rabbit etc etc.

Who does that any more? I did once dye eggs when the children were small, but I have never made a cake in the shape of a lamb, or made my own chocolate bunnies. Am I a failure as a mother, I wonder? (I did write a series of clues for each child to hunt for their Easter basket, and that went on to the grandchildren until they went away to college)

 On the whole our only celebration is a good meal for a birthday or holiday. The exception is Christmas when I do decorate the whole house. However I limit my baking to the traditional sausage rolls and mince pies. No more cookies or the Stollen I used to make. If I want baked goods, i’ll buy them.

In a way it’s sad that so many traditions are disappearing, simply because we don’t have enough time. Or is this just in America where we have all lost our roots? The Chinese community in San Francisco still has its famous festivals, so has the Latino with its Carnival. But being British we have no real holidays to celebrate:--the only one that comes to mind is Guy Fawkes Day and that's to celebrate the execution of the man who tried to blow up parliament. Hardly the most peaceful or joyous of occasions!

 

When I was a child they put up a maypole at my primary school on May 1 and we danced around it, weaving ribbons in and out. In England they still have village cricket matches, all the pomp and ceremony with the royal family, and village fetes in the summer, with booths selling baked goods and all the carnival games as well as races for children (egg and spoon race? Sack race?) They are a tradition in most villages still.  

I wonder if there will be parades again, this Fourth of July, which is as close to a holiday celebration as we get around here. I always enjoyed the local parades with decorated bicycles and cub scouts marching out of rhythm. We may have a family picnic. I may even buy red, white and blue plates and there might be fireworks. 

So who still celebrates holidays in a big way? Who still has family traditions? Do you think that most of these will be lost forever?

LUCY BURDETTE: I hope they won’t all be lost Rhys! Seems like some have gone to the wayside because our society is less formal than it used to be. Possibly less church-oriented too.  Growing up, we always had fancy meals with the same dishes for Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving. Now our holidays are much more relaxed. Probably part of it is because our family isn’t close by, and the kids are grown. They carry on some of the traditions for their kids–Christmas stockings, Easter baskets…

As for me, I’m still baking all kinds of things! (I’ll happily take and use your birthday candles, Rhys.) And I know our town will have a 4th of July parade–it’s very charming and very well attended and we wouldn’t miss it.

 HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, it’s such a process, and doesn’t it depend a bit on whether there are children? Here in New England, July 4th is adorable, I have to  say. We love going to the LIncoln town parade, where they have marching moms and veterans, and junior high school bands and dogs and haywagons and old-fashioned firetrucks, and lots of proud veterans.  And lots of happy kids and dripping ice cream cones And the fireworks on the Esplanade, with the 1812 Overture and  booming cannons. Not to be missed. And ooh, I always have birthday candles.  Those things are markers, no matter how we celebrate.

JENN McKINLAY: I bake a bunny cake every year for Easter, and birthday cake upon request. At Christmas I am in a frenzy of baking cookies, usually. But there is a shift when the children get older. 

On the Hooligans’ birthdays, from the time they were little, I would decorate the house with streamers, a huge Happy Birthday sign and balloons, and while they were sleeping I would barricade their bedroom doorway with streamers and balloons so they had to bust their way out. So fun! But now they’ve moved out and we’re empty nesters…*sigh*

I think traditions just shift and change with the family. Although, if the Hooligans have kids, I really hope they barricade their bedroom doors, too, and keep the tradition going! 

HALLIE EPHRON: We did more when the kids were little. There had to be a homemade chocolate cake with chocolate icing decorated with nonpareils for each birthday. We colored easter eggs and ate chocolate bunnies even though we don’t celebrate Easter. My kids and grands troop over to watch the marathon runners when they race through Brooklyn and find a spot to watch July 4 fireworks, from a distance. At Christmas I make chocolate-covered orange rind and chocolate turtles. And we have our special dishes that I’m happy to make to celebrate special occasions.

We’ve all got our own traditions, some more elaborate and public than others. I remember being in London on Remembrance Day and having no idea why people were wearing poppies.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Agreed about things calming way down after the children are grown. And let’s face it - all the baking and decorating and sign making and basket hiding: who is doing that? Women, that’s who. Tired women who just want a break after making holidays magical for 25 years. I love my family tradition of huge dinner parties on Christmas and Easter (and every third Thanksgiving) but honestly, it was nice to not have them during the past two years. 

Like Jenn, I hope and expect my kids will revamp our earlier celebrations when they get around to having their own children. I’ll show up with chocolate in a stocking/basket and enjoy admiring my daughters’ and

daughter in law’s hard work.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've never been much for holiday baking, and I think I can safely say I've never made a proper birthday cake. I somehow seem to have missed the gene, much I'm sure to my daughter's disappointment. I'm very fond of some of the traditions we do have, but most of those have really fallen by the wayside in the pandemic. We went out for both Easter and Mother's Day brunch this year, and that's a new tradition I'd be happy to continue–no one having to spend hours in the kitchen!

RHYS: I agree, Debs. Nothing that involves hours in the kitchen for me! But Hank is right about needing to have children around for traditions to be meaningful.

So who does carry on family traditions? Bunny cakes?

CELEBRATING EPIPHANY

 RHYS BOWEN:  Since today is going to be such a stressful one for many of us in the US (and if you don't know why I'm not going to tell you). I thought I'd focus on calmer and more meaningful subjects.

Today, January 6, is the Feast of the Epiphany in the Christian tradition. It is the day when the three kings/wise men/magi came to visit the baby Jesus, having followed a star to the stable where he was born. It is symbolic of all the nations coming to realize the importance of this birth.  It is a big feast in all branches of the Christian religion, celebrated more in other countries than in the US.

We were once in Mexico City for Christmas and on January 6 the streets were full of men going around in threes, wearing three kings masks--great big masks, handing out candies to children. 

We have a French friend who always makes a gateau du roi (a king cake) in which there is a tiny plastic baby baked inside. In other cultures its's an almond, a little less gruesome than potentially swallowing a baby. Whoever has it in their slice is blessed for the coming year.

In England the evening before Epiphany is Twelfth Night, the official last night of the Christmas festivities. In days of yore there would have been feasting for all twelve days (remembering that the diets were pretty plain for the rest of the year so that things like raisins, sugar, and especially goose or turkey were absolute luxuries, enjoyed once a year). 

And a small side note of interest. The Partridge in the pear tree in the old song of the Twelve Days of Christmas is a miss-heard translation. The French word for partridge, is une perdriche. . So the song really says A partridge (une perdriche). which I suppose sounds like a pear tree??

Epiphany is the day when the Christmas decorations are supposed to come down. I remember being in Germany once as a girl and on Twelfth Night they let the candles on the tree burn right down until they died one by one and the room was in darkness. So symbolic.

Mine are usually put away before this as we head out to Arizona the first week in January. This year mine are staying up until January 20.  I wonder why? Actually I've been enjoying the twinkling lights around my living room on gloomy evenings. I may even leave them up until Valentine's Day and then hang hearts on the tree.

I really feel that we lack heritage and tradition so much in the US. Our Christmas is all about presents and Santa Claus. We don't have the lovely tradition of Guadalupe. We don't have luminarias for most of the country. Or Saint Lucia with her crown of candles. We don't have men in masks handing out candy today. This is what I love about Europe and why I am drawn back so frequently. I love being in a place whose roots go back to medieval times and whose traditional celebrations are an essential part of life. 

So do you have any traditions for this day in your cultural heritage? And I don't know if you can read the words on my irreverent drawing...

Gingerbread Houses: or an excuse to eat candy

Two Announcements:

First, the Jungle Red Writers will be LIVE today for our holiday cocktail party on the Poisoned Pen's FB page (click HERE) where we'll be giving away SEVEN books! To be entered in the random drawing, simply leave a comment on the livestream and if you want an extra entry, use the secret code "I READ RED" in your comment!

Second, the winners of a Fixer Upper measuring tape from Kate Carlisle are:

Grace Koshida

David Wright

Myersgirlmeli

Pat D

Bibliophile/Diana

Please email your mailing address to Kate@KateCarlisle.Com

Jenn McKinlay: In the before times, one of our family traditions was the annual Gingerbread House decorating competition or as I like to think of it, an afternoon of unrepentant candy eating. For anyone who knows me, it is no surprise that the lure of frosting and candy is a bigger draw than the competition for best house. Did someone say "spice drops"?

The love of gingerbread began when the Hooligans were young: 

We took in some inspirational displays along the way:

And as they became teens, we expanded to meet up at my in-laws' house for a much bigger decorating event with more fam and the houses took on what one would call some holiday teenage snark: 

The Fam

Monster House!

 
Overall, it became an afternoon to spend together with my mother-in-law arranging the houses and supplies, which is her gift (former teacher) while we all chatted and decorated and ate our body weight in candy - okay, that was mostly me, my father-in-law, and Hooligan 2.

Jenn's taste-tested house!

Last year's winner was Hooligan 1 with this news inspired house: 

Totally a mystery writer's kid! LOL.

Because, as we discussed earlier this week, I'm a former librarian, here are some random gingerbread facts for you to share as you will...

The first known recipe for gingerbread comes from Greece in 2400 BC.

The first gingerbread houses date back to 16th century Germany.

The record for the world's largest gingerbread house was broken in Texas (naturally) with a house that was 40,000 cubic feet and required a building permit.

More facts and sundry here: https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-gingerbread/

Okay, Reds and Readers, are you a fan of gingerbread houses? If not, what are some of your holiday traditions?

The Middle Name Game

INGRID THOFT
My standard email sign off is “IPT.”  I always include my middle initial because I don’t want to be the title of a Stephen King novel.  Recipients sometimes try to guess what the “P” stands for, and they are never successful.  Pamela?  Patricia?  Polly?  Nope.

In my family, we were all given family surnames for our middle names, which didn’t seem to be the norm among our friends.  So what does the “P” stand for?

Porter, and its origin is as unorthodox as the name itself.  My father had two middle names, one of which was Porter.  Family lore is that when his mother was being wheeled into the delivery room to give birth to him in their tiny Montana town, Dr. Porter happened to walk by.  He wasn’t my grandmother’s doctor, but she promised if it was a boy, she would name the child after him.  She wasn’t even under the influence of any narcotics!  I suppose she liked the name, and that’s how I became a Porter.

What about you, Reds?  What is your middle name?  Is it your maiden name?  Do you like it or do you wish a different middle name had been bestowed upon you?

RHYS BOWEN: My middle name is Elizabeth. I love the name and was planning to switch to it when I went to college, but chickened out at the last minute . Always regretted that!
My father's middle name was Newcombe, and I wish he'd passed that on to me. Or named me after my fabulous French great-grandmother Josephine who married at 17, had 14 children, still looked like a teenager at 40 and crossed the globe alone at 80 to join her daughter in Australia.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Rhys, one of the couples who run the farm we get our CSA from had a baby Josephine this winter! I was delighted to see the name reappear after a long time in abeyance.

My middle name is Jeanne, which I've always loved, since "Julia Jeanne" has a pleasing resonance to it. My first name is in honor of my father's mother, Jewel Spencer, and my father wanted to give me the same middle name as my mom, Jean. She demurred, until they came up with a compromise: same name, French spelling. Now the Smithie's middle name is Jean. We'll see if it turns up with a different spelling in the next generation.

As near as I can tell, middle names are primarily a way for your mother to signal something is REALLY important. As in, "Julia Jeanne, don't tell me you missed the bus again this morning!" Oddly enough, I say this to myself now, when I forget something or make a boneheaded move. "Julia Jeanne, I can't believe you forgot your shopping bags again." It's true, we do become our mothers.

JENN MCKINLAY: Julia, yes! When we were naming the Hooligans, I said to the Hub, "I have to shout it so that I know it sounds like I mean business." He thought I was crazy, so maybe it's a mom thing. I also shoved my maiden name in there so they both have four names, which driver license and passport issuers just love - not. My middle name is Adelia after my maternal grandmother. I love it since "Jennifers" populated the 80's pretty hard and this was a nice change from all of the other Jennifers who inexplicably all had Marie for a middle name. Plus, my initials were JAM - how can you beat that?

HALLIE EPHRON: I always wanted my middle name to be my first name. Elizabeth. Like, you know, Elizabeth Taylor. And yes, Hallie Elizabeth is what my parents called me when they were issuing orders. What I hated were my initials. HE or HEE. Hee hee hee.

Our daughters are Naomi Samantha and Molly Kate. LOVE the names. When Naomi went to summer camp for the first time, she told everyone her name was Samantha. "Call me Sam." And they did, for two weeks. 

I just had to include this baby.  What a great start to the week!

LUCY BURDETTE: When you have a first name like Roberta (a mouthful, right?), it's good to have an easy middle name. Hence, Ann. One syllable, plain, no mix-ups when you tell someone (except for the pesky question of whether there's an "e" at the end or not.) This name was borrowed from my mother's sister, Barbara Ann, so we always bonded over that. When our daughter was pregnant with her second child, there was a lot of jockeying over prospective names. (They chose not to know the sex until birth.) Ann was popular for a while because both grandmothers have it as middle names, so they could have pleased everyone at once! Didn't need it when Henry was born...

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Of course nothing is simple. Roberta, my middle name is Ann, too. My first name is Harriet. A completely perfect name now, Harriet, and I wish I had kept it.  But when you are 8 and all the cool girls are Debbie and Linda, you do NOT want to be geeky-already without-the-baggage-of-a-terrible-name Harriet. 

So I went by Ann. Or, when I realized about Princess Anne, Anne. OR when I was cool at 16, An. Yes, like the article. It was SO sad.

My parents last name was Landman, so to make things even more terrible,  Ann Landman sounded way too much like--right. Ann Landers. Ha ha ha. Gah.  So when they gave me Hank in college, whoever did, that stuck. 

But I know a good name when I hear one, so I named my characters the names I wished for myself: Charlotte Jane (McNally) and  Jane Elizabeth (Ryland.)  (Now, thinking about that, those names don't fit me at all. I just wish they did.)


DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, I am SO boring. All the DEBORAHs in my generation seemed to have been either Deborah Lynn or Deborah Ann, and I am, you guessed it, a Lynn. In my early teen days, when I hated Debbie with a passion, I wanted to be called Lynn. Fortunately, it never stuck. But I still hate Debbie, so unless you are my aunt, my cousins, or my mother-in-law (who's known me since I was a teen) please don't call me Debbie. (Or cupcakes...) Plus, I was a DD, as in Debbie Darden. Ouch. I named my daughter Katharine Claire, and, so far, at least, she's never complained about either.

Your turn, Readers!  What's your middle moniker?

May Day!

RHYS BOWEN: I was thinking about what to post today when I looked at the date and realized it was May Day. May Day doesn't mean much to most of us in America but when I was growing up it was a big thing in some English villages. I remember learning to dance around the maypole at my elementary school. It's not easy to make sure those ribbons don't get tangled up! And we crowned the Queen of the May.

 I was once in Padstow, Cornwall on May Day and they have the tradition of the hobby horse, or 'Obby 'Oss as it's called there. This sounds delightful but it's actually quite scary: a big black, round creature wearing a mask and pointed hat, and it's followed from house to house by a group of young dancers and musicians, all dressed in a red or blue bandanna. There are actually two 'Osses, the red horse and the blue horse and they cover different parts of the town.

The whole town is decked with flags and flowers. Only families who have lived in the town for two generations can participate. As it approaches each house there is some kind of ritual and everyone sings a song. It starts like this:
Unite and unite and let us all unite,
For summer is acome unto day,
And whither we are going we will all unite,
In the merry morning of May.
Arise up Mr. ..... I know you well afine,
For summer is acome unto day,
You have a shilling in your purse and I wish it were in mine,
In the merry morning of May.
All out of your beds,
For summer is acome unto day,
Your chamber shall be strewed with the white rose and the red
In the merry morning of May.
It didn't actually sound like that. Quite disturbing, actually.  It sounded pagan and primitive almost in a language I didn't understand. And of course it is a continuation of an old Celtic festival. Beltane.

I"ve been to other festivals in May. In Helston, Cornwall, they have the floral dance, or flurrie dance. All the villagers form a chain and dance in and out of the houses in the town. I presume, like the hobby horse, to bring good luck or good crops or a good summer.

I've been in Tuscany and Umbria in May. In Orvieto at Pentecost there is a medieval procession and band and a cage comes zinging down a wire across the main square to the cathedral where it explodes in a mass of fireworks. A man climbs up to retrieve the little cage and we were horrified to find it contained a live dove which was then presented to the archbishop. A symbol of the holy spirit.
In Gubbio teams of men race up a mountain with forty foot wooden candles on their shoulders to a special chapel. In Cortona we witnessed a crossbow competition complete with medieval pagentry.
I should point out that none of the above were done for tourists, in fact in Cortona there were hardly any outsiders. They are all carrying on local tradition.

This is one thing I miss in America. I don't know about you New Englanders, but here in California there are few festivals. We have a couple of parades on July 4. The big Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco. St. Patricks Day in San Francisco, oh, and Carnival and Gay Pride. But local traditions don't exist. In England and Europe you will find quirky little festivals throughout the year. The pancake race, the rolling cheeses down the hill race, the procession of First Communion children on Corpus Christi, the blessing of the harvest. On the Continent they are often linked to saints' days or religious celebrations. In England mostly to village lore. But the good thing is that everyone participates wholeheartedly. It's a reaffirming of hundreds of years of culture. And I miss them.

So, Reds and Readers, are there any festivals near you? Did they ever celebrate May Day when you were growing up?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I agree, Rhys, that England has so many wonderful and quirky little celebrations. May Day and harvest festivals and cider festivals, and there is always that little spine-tingle of the pagan mixed in. I love Boxing Day, too, and what about the Scottish celebration of Hogmanay? Americans are sadly lacking, I fear, although most towns smaller towns in our part of the country make a big deal of the 4th of July, with parades and ice-cream competitions and chili cook-offs. Cinco de Mayo is a big deal in most parts of Texas, too.

JENN MCKINLAY: Rhys, I do remember making May Day baskets and leaving them on neighbor's front doors. It was so much fun to ring the bell or knock and run to hide behind a nearby tree and watch my mom or Mrs. Graham, my favorite neighbor, open the door and smile at the clump of wildflowers my brother and I had smashed into a paper doily cone fitted with a fuzzy pipe cleaner handle. At the time I thought they were spectacular displays but I'm guessing they were probably more enthusiastic than pretty. In Phoenix-Scottsdale, we have a lot of festivals that celebrate everything from Dia de los Muertos to the famous Parada del Sol horse parade to the annual Native American hoop dancing competition. I often hear that the desert has no culture. I couldn't disagree more. Our culture is a multicultural appreciation of our ethnic diversity and it is fabulous.

HALLIE EPHRON: No May Day festivals here... soon, though, Strawberry festivals when Strawberries come in.

When I was in elementary school we had a May Day school-wide dance performance, each grade doing a different dance, and sixth graders got to dance around the May Pole, weaving the ribbons over and under and over and under. I loved it so much.

Fourth of July is the big deal here in Boston, and worth a special trip if you can tolerate crowds.

INGRID THOFT: One of the things that I love about “Midsomer Murders” is that there’s often a fete going on in the village that somehow ties into the mystery.  As a result, DCI Barnaby has an extremely high fete attendance rate.

One festival that I hadn’t known of before we moved to Seattle is Hempfest.  Every August, a beautiful park on the Sound is taken over for all things hemp.  The official mission is to “educate the public on the myriad benefits offered by the cannabis plant.”  That may be, but the scent of marijuana emanates from that corner of the city for the whole weekend (not that different from Seattle these days).  The festival itself doesn’t bother me, but I’m always sad that our beautiful park gets trampled, only to regrow and be trampled anew the next August.  “You kids get off my lawn!”

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  May celebrations? You know, in TV, May is the big ratings month. It's called "the book. (That has a lot of subtext in our novel-world, but it means the May Ratings Book. And nothing about that my novel is also due May 1.) Anyway. The ratings the station gets in May set the ad rates for months to come. So for the last forty years, every May, I work every minute of every day on my TV stories to make them irresistible to viewers. Is it nice weather? I have no idea. I am big on celebrating June. The festival of "the rating book is over."
But! Our tulips are life-affirmingly wonderful.

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh Jenn, we used to make those May Day baskets too, in New Jersey. I have no idea how that tradition started! If you want festivals and events, you must come to Key West. Honestly, there is something happening every single week! This week as we left, the town was celebrating Conch Republic days, to commemorate the time the town decided to secede from the US in 1982. This happened because the US Border Patrol had set up a check point in Florida City to inspect all traffic going on and off the islands. (Hmmm, this is starting to sound familiar!)

You can read more about it here: https://conchrepublic.com/our-history/our-beginning/

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: : I seem to recall those May Day baskets, but I don't know if I actually participated as a child or just heard about the tradition. My children, now, all of whom went to parochial school in their early years, have many memories of May Day, which is still a BIG thing in Catholic elementary schools. There was a parade, and a couple of kids (presumably the most well-behaved that week) took a floral wreath and crowned a large statue of Our Lady. They sang, as I recall, "Bring Flowers of the Fairest" - "O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May."

Of course, the Marian devotion is, as Debs and Rhys notes, the Christianized version of the ancient Beltane celebrations of fertility and abundance. It's a shame so many places have lost touch with these sorts of traditions that stretch back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. I suppose in a non-agricultural society, we just don't share the joy and gratitude of our ancestors at surviving the winter and returning to the season of warmth and food and light. Although here in New England we get pretty close at times...

RHYS: Oh yes, Julia. My children at Catholic kindergarten had a May procession with the best-behaved girl chosen to crown the statue of Mary. Needless to say none of my kids was ever chosen!__._,_.___

So who else remembers May Day traditions? Or other folksy festivals? And happy May Day everyone! Imagine that the Jungle Red Writers have left a cone of flowers on all your doorsteps!