Moorestown Friends School welcomes spring with May Day celebration
MOORESTOWN – Moorestown Friends School students, friends and alumni ushered in spring with the quadrennial May Day celebration on May 4, a tradition the school has upheld for over a century.MFS hosts the Elizabethan celebration of spring every four years, which includes a festive Maypole Dance – a tradition that gained popularity in England in the Middle Ages – along with performances, music, activities and crafts.Students lined the streets dressed as jesters,
Posted May 23, 2018 at 11:39 AM
MOORESTOWN — Moorestown Friends School students, friends and alumni ushered in spring with the quadrennial May Day celebration on May 4, a tradition the school has upheld for over a century.
MFS hosts the Elizabethan celebration of spring every four years, which includes a festive Maypole Dance — a tradition that gained popularity in England in the Middle Ages — along with performances, music, activities and crafts.
Students lined the streets dressed as jesters, knights, pirates and adorned in gowns and flower crowns.
“I do think it builds community. It’s really a true community celebration, so we have students from preschool all the way through twelfth grade, so it’s (students of different ages) interacting, and we do have a lot of our parents and alumni that come back for May Day,” said Mike Schlotterbeck, director of marketing and communications for Moorestown Friends School.
About 50 volunteers participated in organizing the event, which included faculty, staff and parents who doubled as sewers, preparing the costumes for the big day.
Based on an ancient Roman festival in which Romans offered flowers to Flora, their goddess of spring, May Day became a global event after Romans brought the tradition to all their conquered European lands, according to the school.
The holiday became popular in England during the Middle Ages when residents collected flowers and tree branches to decorate their homes, and gathered in the town square where the Maypole was raised, which was often more than 100 feet tall.
Dancers held the streamers that fell from the top of the pole and circled around it, weaving the streamers into tight patterns. These agricultural festivals were intended to ensure fertility of the crops.