You've heard of a Christmas tree — how about a May bush?

Take a drive along the Avalon Peninsula's Cape Shore or Killick Coast this May, and you may come upon an unfamiliar type of holiday tree: a spruce or fir, stripped of its lower boughs so that only a tuft is left at the top, which is decked out in blue ribbons.

You might wonder if it's some kind of straggler from the Christmas holidays, but this festive evergreen has its own long tradition on the island.

Called May bushes, May trees, or May poles, depending on the community, these decorations customarily went up on May 1, and stayed up for the rest of the month. 

They're a vestige of the May Day celebrations that were once common across Northern Europe. 

Heralding the coming of summer and the beginning of the agricultural season, May 1 was an opportunity to rejoice in the renewal of the Earth after a long, cold winter. Merrymakers gathered wildflowers, lit bonfires, and, in some areas, selected a queen of May to preside over their revels. 

The cornerstone of most May Day festivities was the May pole, a tall wooden post strung with garlands or ribbons. 

The May pole often served as the centrepiece of a circle dance, though the version you might have seen in films — where dancers hold the ends of streamers attached to the pole and circle around it until the ribbons are wound all the way to the base — probably wasn't invented until the 19th century. 

Despite their scenic charm, May poles weren't universally admired. Protestant reformers were harsh critics of exuberant holidays like May Day, which they suspected of having pagan origins.

In a 1644 ordinance "for the better observation of the Lords-Day," the Puritan-majority British parliament — the same parliament that would later outlaw Christmas — banned May poles, calling them "a Heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness." 

Their use wasn't reinstated in the United Kingdom until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. 

A Newfoundland bush with Irish roots

A version of the May pole made its way to Newfoundland with the immigrants who sailed from southeast Ireland in the late 17th and 18th centuries. 

In Ireland, May bushes are decorated on May Day or May Eve — April 30 — with fresh flowers, ribbons, and painted eggshells saved from Easter. Typically, either a hawthorn or gorse is chosen as the shrub of honour, since both plants flower in the month of May.

According to Irish folklorists Michael Fortune and Aileen Lambert, authors of The May Bush in County Wexford, May Day — called Bealtaine in Gaelic — was a "turning point in the year when 'the fairies' were out." It was also the beginning of the growing season, when it was critical to protect newborn livestock and recently sown crops. 

The May bush was intended to keep the fae folk, witches, and anything else that might harm the coming year's harvest away from the homestead. 

Roman Catholicism, the dominant faith in southeast Ireland, took a different approach to these May festivities than England's Puritans. Instead of forbidding them, the church absorbed them. 

At the end of the 18th century, frustrated by the misbehaviour of his students, Jesuit Father Latomia in Rome decreed that the month of May should be devoted to the Virgin Mary as a way to encourage chastity and virtue. This May observance soon spread to Roman Catholic parishes around the world.

In both Ireland and Newfoundland, Catholics set up May altars to Mary in their homes. Mary became the true queen of the May, and the local May queen merely her representative on Earth.

At St. Bride's College (Littledale) in St. John's, students even chose a "Mary" instead of a May queen to lead their May procession.

In Newfoundland communities like Torbay, Middle Cove, Riverhead and Point Lance, the May bush also became consecrated to Mary. May bushes were decorated specifically in blue, a colour that's been associated with the Virgin since at least the sixth century, and a statue of Mary was occasionally set up alongside them. 

While the traditional Newfoundland May bush was an evergreen stripped of its lower limbs and tied to a fence post to keep it upright, today some prefer to simply decorate a living tree or shrub in their yard, and the candles that once adorned some Irish May bushes have been replaced by fairy lights.

Come June, May bushes are either taken down or their blue ribbons are replaced with red ones, transforming the "May tree" into a "June tree" in honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In Roman Catholicism, June is the month and red the colour of the Sacred Heart, which represents Jesus' love for humanity. 

According to researcher Lara Maynard, May bushes here were once erected for luck like they were in Ireland, but the custom is kept alive today mostly as a religious observance or family tradition. 

Perhaps that's because, in Newfoundland, May Day is still a bit early to be thinking about agriculture and the safety of the next year's harvest. 

Seeds shouldn't be sown outdoors until late May or June, so May 1 can hardly be called the beginning of summer. Based on the weather we've had in April, we'll be lucky if it doesn't snow this May.

But, if it does, our local May bush tradition has a solution: at the end of the month, you can burn the bush in your wood stove for heat. 

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