What is May Day?

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Subtitles: Jose Mendoza | IG @worldagainstjose

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[Lionstar]

Growing up in the UK, we celebrated May Day at primary school with maypole dancing and crowning the May Queen (which was the youngest girl in the class) - being an August baby meant I was one one year :)

[EladLerner]

Most history channels tell the stories of armies, leaders, world-changing events, and so on. I just love how you tell the histories of the culture and traditions we take for granted. So much of history is the things we don't think about often: The food, the festivals, the costumes. Thank you for bringing light to those obscure corners of history, through food.

[brongulus]

Arriving at an absolute pokerface while you say "whose pole was the tallest" is, to my estimation, a mark of most gentlemanly taste and class. And sense of humor.

[cazadoo]

As someone in the UK who eats flowers with salads fairly often, I recommend chive flowers, they are purple and taste of chives and nasturtium flowers which are peppery

[ashe]

That American English vs British English history lesson was some of the gentlest shade I've ever seen thrown 😂

[Amy_the_Lizard]

Tip with the flowers: some taste sweet, like roses, violets, or lavender, and might not be the best choice if you're going for a savory salad. Good savory flowers include the flowers of a lot of savory herbs like basil and oregano, flowers of various members of the onion family (onion, chive, shallot, ect - basically the whole allium genus, ) or dandelion and marigold. Some flavor neutral options include day lily (not other lilies - lots of them are poisonous, ) pansy, or carnation

[CapriUni]

I graduated from a small private school (pre-K through 12th grade, with about 300 students, total), and when I was in Tenth grade, the art teacher and the headmaster conspired to start a Mayday celebration. In the fall semester, the high school art class built a giant, paper maché dragon that the little kids could climb around inside of / on top of. This was our "dragon of Winter" And then, on Mayday, this dragon was brought out to the center of our soccer field, and our biology teacher came out of the woods behind our school and shot a flaming arrow into the dragon to create the bonfire that banished winter and ushered in the spring. Also, the whole school had all our afternoon classes off. Good Times. (This was back in the 1980s, in NY State)

[annavogel]

In Bavaria we also have the may pole. It's called Maibaum.
You collect a tree from the forrest and bring it in town. For the next six week you make the tree into a pole with colouring and decorating it. In this time the Maibaum also needs to be guard, since the other villages around gonna try to steal it.
And then on the first day of May you put it in the middle of your village and have similar festivals like Max described. You repeat the whole thing all three to four years.
This festival was actually for the bachelors. your dance partner on the first of May often was the person you ended up marrying.

[melannieg]

The tradition of dyeing non-green foods green reminds me of Green Eggs and Ham day at school when I was growing up 😜

[kellydean]

"And if erecting this massive pole is too nuanced for you, men from neighboring villages would gather together and have contests of whose pole was the tallest."
(Stoic knowing stare)
🤣🤣🤣
You're awesome, Max!

[ohariana]

Between the apron and the salad Max is fully embracing the spring aesthetic and I'm here for it 💐🌷🥗

[janach]

When I was growing up in the Sixties in the US, the custom was to assemble small baskets of flowers and deliver them to one’s neighbors on the morning of May Day.

[papercurse]

In the villages where I'm from in Frankonia there's an interesting May Day tradition: each village erects a decorated birch tree on April 30. then during the night there's a big fire lit and young men stand guard to protect their tree from men from neighboring villages who might come try and steal the tree (theoretically, mostly they just get drunk around the fire). In the 18 years I lived in the region maybe 2-3 trees were actually stolen, never ours tho!

[skellious]

Back in the 90's I was at primary school in Southern England and we had a maypole, dancing with ribbons around the pole, morris dancing, and a May Queen (The May Queen was always a second-to-last year girl so that the following year she could return as the "Queen of Winter" and hand off her crown to the new May Queen.)

[ChickenPermission]

So basically it started out as we survived the cold, let’s get nekkit!” 😅
In all seriousness, that’s quite an interesting history. I’d never known the history of May Day, but it’s quite vast and wild lol

[weathermageclapp]

You could have added Lemon thyme. Yes the leaves are tiny but they add a lot of flavor and a strong lemon scent. When I was making salads from my own garden it was a great add.

[danielm]

Also the word “herb” comes to English from French, who wouldn’t have pronounced the H. Also, some Middle English texts even spell it “erbes” or “erbs”.

[Grimmalkin]

I grow chives in my garden, and use the chive flowers in salad. They add a lovely crunch, as well as tasting like mild chives.

[TheMichigami]

the moment you mentioned dandelion greens i was like "yay! oh wait..." because dandelion are delicious and super nutritious, but someone is going to try making something like this not understanding how to prep dandelion down the road and get a mouthful of the bitterest nasty on the planet. Any time you eat dandelion leaves, they have to either be the younger leaves, or you have to soak em in saltwater to get the latex and bitter taste out once they reach a certain age, and the largest elder leaves are just too bitter and woody to eat fresh at all, and all of them can cause people with latex allergies to have reactions depending on the level of their allergen sensitivity.

Also, for a topical musical experience that you shouldn't listen to around children or people who blush easily, i recommend Jonathan Coulton's "The First of May", (one of the kings of comedy songs and nerd music also the creator of the Portal theme songs.)

[HobbyDad]

Doing a "well actually" on the British pronunciation of herbs, well played, Max, well played.