[Worship] more on the Maypole

[Martha McGovern]

Hi, Worship & Music folks --

Several sites suggest that the pole traces back to Norse Paganism in which the universe was represented as a world tree and sacred trees were identified.  The pole, then, represented the world axis, axis mundi.  
Thomas Hobbes is credited with tracing the tradition back to Rome and Priapis, with related phallic associations, but that interpretation may be faulty.

Wikipedia offers an extensive explanation of the Maypole tradition that includes what Caroline Putnam probably referred to.
In Britain, the Maypole tradition was discouraged as pagan by Protestants, but the Catholic royalty promoted it.
Move now to the colonies.  The Protestant colonists also banned the maypole.  However, in 1628, a group of indentured servants broke free to establish their own colony and set up a maypole to celebrate their independence.  The section from Wikipedia is copied below.

I'm thinking that the ideas of the "world tree" and the maypole dance as a celebration of freedom can inform our own incorporation of the maypole into our worship practices.  I also read about "garlanding" -- a practice in which individuals decorate small poles (branches, dowels) with ribbons, flowers, etc.  That might be an interesting art project or BRIDGES large group activity. 

Martha

While not celebrated among the general public in the United States today, a Maypole Dance nearly identical to that celebrated in the United Kingdom is an important part of May Day celebrations in local schools and communities .[21] Often the Maypole dance will be accompanied by other dances as part of a presentation to the public.

The earliest use of the Maypole in America occurred in 1628, where William Bradford, governor of New Plymouth, wrote of an incident where a number of servants, together with the aid of an agent, broke free from their indentured service to create their own colony, setting up a maypole in the center of the settlement, and behaving in such a way as to receive the scorn and disapproval of the nearby colonies, as well as an official officer of the king, bearing patent for the state of Massachusetts. Bradford writes:

  "They also set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days togaether, inviting the Indean women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking togither, (like so many fairies, or furies rather,) and worse practises. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of the Roman Goddess Flora, or the beasly practieses of the madd Bacchinalians. Morton likwise (to shew his poetrie) composed sundry rimes & verses, some tending to lasciviousnes, and others to the detraction & scandall of some persons, which he affixed to this idle or idoll May-polle. They changed also the name of their place, and instead of calling it Mounte Wollaston, they call it Merie-mounte, as if this joylity would have lasted ever. But this continued not long, for after Morton was sent for England, shortly after came over that worthy gentleman, Mr. John Indecott, who brought a patent under the broad seall, for the governmente of the Massachusets, who visiting those parts caused the May-polle to be cutt downe, and rebuked them for their profannes, and admonished them to looke ther should be better walking; so they now, or others, changed the name of their place againe, and called it Mounte-Dagon."[22]

Governor Bradford's censure of the Maypole tradition played a central role in Nathaniel Hawthorne's fictional story "The Maypole of Merry Mount", 1837.


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