As we travel the seasonal road from winter to spring in great anticipation of summer, we encounter a period that is somewhat in between. With April we certainly see some of our first signs of warmth, but then again cold once more. It truly is not until the month of May that we feel we have finally been welcomed by a new season with hope eternal. As we celebrate our very own “May Day” next week we are in fact jubilant about a day of celebration that was quite known and very celebrated in the past. Today there are many people unaware and certainly not celebrating this often-forgotten day.

There seems to be no single source and origin to the celebration of May Day. The first day of May is designated as May Day and still celebrated by some. There is reference through the years to the celebration of May Day noting the importance on the calendar, a period of transition when our Concord ancestors that found their work as farmers celebrated the beginning of the planting season. Now that the cold nights and warm days of maple sugaring have concluded the temperature continues to rise, allowing for the first planting of the season. The fear of a killing frost is soon forgotten, and clement weather has started. This period in May has been celebrated for many generations, especially by those that plant crops, as a day to celebrate the incoming season and bid the ominous weather of winter a final riddance. Many have referenced the origin of May Day with strong roots in England and elsewhere dating back to very early history, the tradition brought to America by the early English settlers. The celebrations have certainly been romanticized over the years, and both new and old traditions were celebrated by our Concord ancestors as well as those across America.

It was in the city of Concord that the young boys of over a century ago captured their very own essence of the perfect May Day. While many a young lady would celebrate in the American tradition with a May Pole and banners at White Park each May 1, the boys of Concord would seek other entertaining elements.

Some of the early north end boys would plan a nearby visit to the Methodist Seminary to engage in friendly combat with the young Christian boys attending class. The Methodist Seminary was actually the real Old North Church and located on the grounds of the Walker School building. It was a wooden structure and painted a traditional New England shade of plain white. After the Old North Church and meeting house became available, it was used next as the Methodist Seminary and definitely on the map each May 1.

It was on May 1, as the young Concord girls played at the park, that the north end boys plotted and planned their move on the seminary boys. The young students at the seminary were quite rugged in nature, and their strength was certainly to be avoided at all cost. Early on the morning of each May 1 the young Concord north end boys would rise early, hours before the sun. They quietly met near the Old North Cemetery as each brandished their shiny brass horns. They would quietly cross the street under cover of darkness and approach the open windows of the Methodist Seminary as the young students slept. At the appropriate moment the boys blew their loud horns in harmony once again infuriating the slumbering students and inciting a friendly rivalry that lasted from year to year.

The students housed in the seminary quickly organized and assailed each boy with horn in hand, sending a variety of missiles showering the horn blowers. Buckets of water were added as well as various forms of other debris. With horns wailing, water and buckets sailing and much yelling and screaming, another well-planned May Day concluded again until the following year.

This annual adolescent celebration of May Day continued for many years, until a great fire consumed the Old North Church late one evening.

Many of the north end boys felt they were deprived and missing one of the greatest celebrations welcoming the new season once the church was gone. Perhaps some of the young boys meandered up Washington Street to White Park and celebrated the season with the young ladies around the ornately decorated May Pole.

As you celebrate your May Day next week, remember the Concord boys and girls of the past. Sound your own brass horn and retaliate with buckets of cold water. Wake those slumbering youths from their deep sleep. It is time to awaken, May has arrived!

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