The wreaths of May – power of nature in your home
It is May 1st today and everybody in Greece is celebrating Spring. The custom of Protomagia (May 1st) with a flower festival has its roots in ancient Greece. It celebrates the peak of spring and Mother Nature.
Being a national holiday, the custom is to get out into the countryside and collect spring flowers to make a wreath and hang it on the door. In this way people welcome the power of nature into their homes. The floral wreaths come in all shapes and sizes and decorate doorknobs, lintels above the front doors of homes, church fronts, even the human heads.
The wreaths adorn the houses until the day of St. John the Harvester (June 24) when all the wreaths of the neighborhood are gathered and burnt in a big fire.
The May Day custom of wreath making is lost through the centuries. In ancient Greece, the coming of May was celebrated along with the blooming of flowers and the coming of spring and for this reason wreaths were made. The bases for those wreaths were constructed from a flexible wood and the selected flowers and plants all had their own significance and meaning. The flowers of fruit trees (orange, lemon, pomegranate) symbolized prosperity and greenery was used in order to symbolized fertility, along with other plants. Often, garlic and nettle was placed in wreaths in order to exorcise evil.
Today’s wreaths however, are nothing like the traditional wreaths made by our ancestors to celebrate spring. They are mainly made of flowers that just smell and look pretty, without any symbolism. This however does not mean that their existence does not mark the coming of spring or does not provide the same joy. In fact, May Day trips or just the process of making a wreath, automatically puts us in a joyful spring mood.
What flower wreath did you make this year?
