Like so many holidays - be they revered or nearly forgotten - May Day has pagan roots reaching back to the ancient Celts. For Druids, May 1, or the festival of Beltane, was one of the two most important holidays of the year - an anchor which divided their year in half. At the other end was Samhain on Nov. 1, which you may recall from previous columns to be the earliest known root of modern Halloween.

Yes, May Day is about spring, but before flowers and Maypoles there was fire. Destructive, yes, but in a good way (reminiscent of Kali, for those who know the Hindu god of change). To make way for the new in nature, the old must often be first destroyed.

The Celts, and later, others, lit fires to represent the burgeoning springtime sun - a purifying force. Through those life-giving fires cattle were driven (hopefully, very quickly!). Men would walk their sweethearts through the smoke, hoping to experience visions of a lucky future.

When the Romans arrived to occupy the British Isles, naturally they brought their own traditions. May was a popular feast time in ancient Rome (it seems nearly anytime was feast time; Romans loved to party), devoted to Flora, goddess of flowers and fertility. Her five-day festival Floralia, or Ludi Florae ("the games of Flora"), began April 28 and ended May 2. Gradually her rituals merged with Beltane's. Center among these was a tree, symbolizing fertility and vitality, around which the revelers danced.

Sound familiar?

By the Middle Ages every English village had its Maypole. Bringing in the year's Maypole from the woods was a big occasion, fraught with merrymaking. Villages competed to produce the tallest or best Maypole. Children danced around it, wrapping the tree in violets and colorful ribbons, one of the rare survivors among today's European traditions. Similarly decorated during ancient Rome's spring festival, a sacred pine tree representing the Roman consort-god Attis was carried in procession to the temple of Cybele - another fertility goddess.

France too loved the Maypole, and took it to new heights. The May Tree became the "Tree of Liberty," a symbol of the French Revolution. They planted theirs in 1790, decorating it with tri-colored ribbons to signify liberty. A few years later, revolutionaries in America and Italy followed suit with their own trees of liberty (in the U.S., poplars).

Maypole traditions suffered a serious setback under Puritan rule in the 17th Century, where virtually all celebration - and darned near everything fun - was frowned upon. The Puritan ways emigrated to America, and while their views eventually lost prominence May Day never fully recovered.

Now, I thought about leaving the next bit out, but it's too significant and too little known a part of U.S. history. "May Day" has a double meaning, although with no connection beyond a shared date.

"May Day" is also an International Workers' Day, a.k.a. why the standard work day here is eight hours long. It seems antithetical to sum up decades of effort, suffering, and lost lives in a few sentences. Nevertheless, on May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 laborers nationwide walked off the job and hit the streets in demonstration against average 10 to 16-hour workdays and extremely unsafe conditions.

Industrial workplace injuries - including fatal ones - were once commonplace, and inspired famous books such as Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and Jack London's "The Iron Heel." Whatever the controversies regarding organized labor today, it certainly had its purpose in the 19th Century. Most in modern society now take those benefits for granted. They bear remembering.

So whatever you commemorate, step outside on this beautiful May Day and pause for a moment's reflective respite under the renewing rays of a timeless sun.

Sholeh Patrick, J.D. is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at sholeh@cdapress.com.