'It's May! It's May... That darling month when everyone throws self-control away.' May 1, 2011.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

I had quite a different thought in mind for my article today... but at about 4 a.m. a light breeze caressed me and I was overwhelmed by an astonishing chorus of birdsong, as one determined winged group answered another, each and every one of them demanding con brio that I wake up and celebrate this day... and make sure you celebrate it, too, for the true end of winter (not just some date on the calendar) is a most important thing.

So, I threw up the sash on the window and quaffed the air. There wasn't a touch of winter in it,  not a scintilla, not a particle. It was well and truly May... and, in an instant, I was back over 50 years ago where, in the breeze way, my mother was engaged in directing her young charges in the finer points of May baskets. But first...

On December 3, 1960 Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot" opened in New York with Julie Andrews and Richard Burton as  Guinevere and King Arthur. Andrews belted out a pip of a song on May... and it's utterly appropriate you let it enliven your day today. Go now to any search engine and find it, and let it be 1960 for you all over again...

"It's May! It's May! The lusty month of May! That lovely month when ev'ryone goes Blissfully astray."

The truth is, my days of going "blissfully astray" have long passed. This is not a good thing... we all need a day now and then when "wicked thoughts Merrily appear."

May 1 is tailor-made to be that day: "That gorgeous holiday When ev'ry maiden prays that her lad Will be a cad!"

For many years politics, particularly Red politics as directed by dour Russian communists whose dissipations were leaden and plodding, obscured the real purpose of May 1 and, indeed, the entire month of May. Lenin and company decreed that May's license for merriment be replaced by International Workers' Day (also known as International Labour Day).

Per usual, this determination came in a ukase from the sweat-drenched apparatchiki of Moscow... personally, I have always maintained that if the workers had been asked for their opinion on the matter they would have chosen...

""It's May, it's May, the month of  'Yes, you may' The time for every frivolous whim, proper or im-"

But that was the thing about those revolutionary Russkies: they were always telling you something, demanding something, insisting on something... the very things we throw off on May 1st... the better to let our genetic code do its thing and direct us in uninhibited may-hem.

In short,the vital sap of May has proven its prodigious strength... there will not be in Moscow today -- or perhaps anywhere -- a tedious parade featuring tractors and heroes of the falsely named republics. These parades and the grim visaged crew who invented and directed them have been toppled... and we all have regained the undisputed right to a day "depraved in every way"... and a good thing, too. It's what the workers would have chosen for themselves... if anyone had bothered to ask them. Which brings us back to the true meaning of May Day and the May days which follow....

Sacred to the feast of Beltane, Celtic start of summer.

May Day calls for a sloughing off of sober responsibilities and of the proper, serious, VIP you have become. For this day, this single day, you dance, not march, to a different drummer, this time played by the (rather sheepish) pagans who celebrate the festival of Beltane. Sadly these latter-day neo-pagans are in desperate need of experienced help. I have rarely seen a more tatterdemalion crew or folks more in need of assistance in the art of dissipation. Their current antics are not inspiring and irritate, I aver, the high panoply of Celtic deities who wince every time a foul-smelling, foul-attired Beltaniain happens by. In short, the neo-pagans are an embarrassment in need of a make-over, the better to serve the cause of excess and pleasure.

No doubt they are adversely afflicted by the shear lack of accurate information about how the good pagans of yore did dissipate. What's known about Beltane, for instance, is quite frankly not very attractive. For instance, a highlight of the event was the ever-festive bonfire created by rubbing sticks together. Related rituals included driving cattle between two fires, dancing around the fires, and burning witches in effigy, no doubt an acquired taste.

Another tradition was Beltane cakes, which would be broken into several pieces, one of which was blackened. These pieces would then be drawn by celebrants at random, the person getting the unlucky piece would face a mock execution. Perhaps it was more alluring and pleasurable if you were actually there...

Walpurgisnacht.

St. Walburga (or Walpurgis), the abbess of the monastery of Heidenheim, helped St. Boniface bring Christianity to 8th century Germany. The date of May 1 became, over time, sacred to this well-loved Christian lady, the better to obliterate a pre-existing pagan festival, again including rites to protect oneself from witchcraft. This lead, in the muddled way with such matters, to a hybrid festival in which witches were said to meet with the Devil on the eve of May 1. The night of April 30th became known as "Walpurgisnacht"... and the day following was, perhaps, given over to gratitude for having survived it.

Things were better in England...

In medieval England, folks would celebrate the start of spring by going out to the country or woods "going a-maying" by gathering greenery and flowers, the first description of this occurring in "The Court of Love" (1561). Thereafter the maypole went up... the music began... morris dancers at the ready... and a May Queen to crown with persiflage, good humor, debauchery and the certainty of a headache tomorrow. Yes, as always, the Brits know how to party...

From this tradition came my mother's May Day version. Like everywhere else in the great heartland, May 1st in Illinois meant the harsh winter was gone, gone forever. Everyone and everything breathed easier as a result; there was the promise of clemency and of sultry slower moving days. The advent to these days lay through the rich flora of midwestern America. Our home, beside a rambling creek, was incomparably beautiful at springtime, carpeted as it was with violets on every side. In the late light of day, you could believe it was God's own greenhouse.

From this incomparable soil came its harvest of beauty... tulips, lilacs, the last remaining daffodils and always the violets in unimaginable beauty and abundance...

From these my mother chose the best and directed us in how to make the May baskets... and make them just so, festooned as always by a ribbon of the brightest hue. Then, without a card, she dispatched us on the task of delivery; to be put in front of entry doors, the doorbell rung, then running fast away, never to be seen.

I asked her once why we didn't add a card, like florists do. She only smiled. I know why now... we who delivered, laughing so, were the card... and our message was unmistakable, an image of youth and laughter, running through a panorama of flowers whose very fragrance I can smell to this pristine May day.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Howard Martell <a href="http://HomeProfitCoach.com">http://HomeProfitCoach.com</a>. Check out Job Crusher 2 ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=qt4GFHKF

OK so…spring is now here, again.

Here is the musical accompaniment for today’s article.  Another in the series of spring time tales. I hope you were able to catch these others one on crocus, one on dafodils and one on the Red Red Robin. Anyway, enjoy the article on the Tulips and feel free to comment at the end.
‘And if I kiss you in the garden, in the moonlight….’ The tulips are coming! April 5, 2011.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s note: You will get the most from this article by listening to “Tip Toe Thru’ The Tulips” before you start, or as you read. Search for the subject at any search engine. There are many renditions, both old and new. After all, not only is the tune perky and upbeat but tulips are the embodiment of springtime… and no one can get enough of that!
Spring on the calendar perhaps…
Yes, I know what the calendar says; that we’ve had spring in New England for 2 weeks now. But what do these folks know? I checked my calendar and discovered it was printed in Tennessee. What do they know about the fickle weather hereabouts?  So far ours has been a typical “spring”, a mixture of snow, mud, and exasperation for the fact that winter just won’t let go, ornery and tenacious as ever.
The crocuses came, of course, and lovely, too. I noticed a new shade of purple this year, or, more likely, I took the  trouble to stop, look and  finally see what those industrious croci had laid before me so often before. So determined are they that they would find a way to ascend, even if the  snow were rooftop. I love them…. but they don’t mean spring quite yet; what’s more the birds have had their way with them, per usual. They know just where the saffron is to be found… and they leave hardly any.
The daffodils hold sway right now, but they, too, while arriving just after spring has been declared do not necessarily mean spring is actually here. Like the students of the Harvard Law School across the street, the ones wearing short pants and playing frisbee in the mud, daffodils put on a brave show, none braver.
However, like the students with their visible shivers and white, white legs with veins picked out in unnatural blue, to see daffodils against the dirty snow causes one to check the calender again and verify that yes, it is spring, though we still are dubious.
Tulips mean spring, almost.
Now the first shoots of this year’s tulips are up; I have seen them for, what?, 3 days now. They are so small and tender; my heart goes out to them, as yours would, too, if you were here and took the time to see. Do they know how eagerly the world awaits them… and what a brief, brief life they’ll have? Or, like youth everywhere, are they oblivious, focused solely on the all-consuming business of being young, beautiful, exuberant and truly glad to greet every passerby with a joy whose secret is youth’s alone?
Tulips, you see, are not just harbingers of the real spring near at hand; they are a bridge to memory. When we see a tulip blowing proudly in the wind, we remember (and grateful too) springtimes long gone and smile as we recall how blissfully we spent those seasons in tulip time, glad to be alive! Tulips know their work, know how much we need their magic. They therefore stay a little longer with us than the flowers which precede.  And as our memories are sweet, we thank them…
Some facts.
The tulip is a perennial, bulbous plant with showy flowers in the genus Tulipa, which comprises 109 species. The genus’s native range extends from as far west as Southern Europe, North Africa, Anatolia, and Iran to the Northwest of China. The tulip’s center of diversity is the Pamir, Hindu Kush, and Tien Shan mountains.
Depending on the species, tulip plants can grow as short as 4 inches (10 cm) or as high as 28 inches (71 cm). The tulip’s large flowers usually bloom on scapes or subscapose stems. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes.
Origin of the name.
Although the Netherlands is the country most associated with tulips, commercial cultivation of the flower began in the Ottoman Empire. The tulip, or lale l(from the Persian) is indigenous to much of the area ruled by the Ottoman Sultans. The word tulip ultimately derives from the Persian “dulband”, meaning turban. Look closely at the shape of the tulip and you can see, if your eye is felicitous, the turbanned faithful answering the call from the minaret to prayer. Squint your eye and behold…
No one actually knows how, even where, the first tulips entered Europe. Some say they were first brought to and planted in Vienna, by 1573. Others opt for Holland. Experts like to quibble, and tulips, who know the facts historians seek, do not disclose them; they, like us, enjoy being the center of unceasing attention. The plain fact is, wherever people saw tulips, they wanted tulips. This lead, not long after tulips became known in Europe, to the mad phenomenon called “Tulip Mania.”
One bulb, valued at 10 times the annual wage of a skilled craftsman.
No event shows man at his most venal, greedy, and stupid than the Tulip Mania of 1637. It is generally regarded as the first recorded speculative bubble, where the rarest bulbs could fetch the price of a house in Amsterdam’s finest district — for an instant. Timing here, as with all economic events, was everything. Privately, tulips admit they enjoyed being the focus of such overwrought enthusiasm; they think it’s just what they deserve… and have memorized long passages about themselves from British journalist Charles Mackay’s book on the matter, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” (1841). Historians doubt some of his conclusions, but to the tulips his every word is sacrosanct.
A poem disapproved, a tune embraced.
Unsurprisingly, given their continuing popularity, tulips are frequently the focus of poets, authors, lyricists. They faithfully encode all this and are effusive in their thanks. Admittedly, they don’t like everything said about them. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Tulips” (posthumously published in 1965) at first gave general offense:
“The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.”
Tulips take their cheering task with grave seriousness.  Plath’s reaction to a gift whilst in hospital affronted. Like the rest of the literate world, by the time they knew of the lady’s many afflictions of heart and soul she was dead (1963). The general consensus is that if she’d had more tulips, she would have had less angst. I agree.
Tip toe…
The tulips tell me they adore a peppy little number called “Tip Toe Thru’ The Tulips” and are always ready to sing it as the warm breezes of spring waft. Written in 1926 by Joe Burke, with lyrics by Al Dubin. It brightened the 1929 hit “Gold Diggers of Broadway”. Years later, the calculated oddness of Tiny Tim (born 1932 as Herbert Khaury) brought it again to America’s attention:
“And if I kiss you in the garden, In the moonlight, will you pardon me? Come tiptoe through the tulips with me!?
Tiny Tim died too soon, in 1996. Every tulip remembers him fondly… a man who knew a likely lyric when he heard it and brought smiles to the faces of millions. “Knee deep in flowers he’ll stray…” The flowers will be tulips of course.