Obscure Holidays in May

Unusual May Celebrations
Obscure Holidays You May Have Never Heard About

May is such a wonderful month. It starts with a festival of flowers once celebrated by children dancing around the May pole. It ends with Memorial Day, which usually launches the time for summer vacations. But the many unique day-long celebrations in May are often overlooked.

It seems like May is the perfect month to dedicate days for events that are so unusual, they might be overlooked. I’m talking about days like: National Kite Day, Limerick Day, and National Dance-Like-A-Chicken Day.

No one really knows how National Dance-Like-A-Chicken Day came to be celebrated, but it has been around long enough that it is now recognized every May 14^th. It’s one of those bizarre holidays causing you to wonder why anyone who would want to devote an entire day to dancing like a chicken.

As eccentric as it is, Dance-Like-A-Chicken Day has become a tradition, not only on May 14, but also at many wedding receptions. The custom is that, sometime after the traditional dance for the bride and groom, guests are invited to dance-like-a-chicken. It invites people of all ages to dance, act silly, and put a smile on their face.

May 12^th is National Kite Day. Any school child knows the story of Benjamin Franklin using a kite in a storm to “discover” electricity, but the Chinese were believed to use kites for hundreds of years. From the middle of the 19^th century until the advent of airplanes, kites were for a variety of scientific purposes.

Now kites are used primarily by hobbyists or to entertain children on windy days. There is an assortment of festivals and local events that continue to celebrate kites in numerous forms, from traditional diamond-shaped kites to box kites to strange and unconventional kites.

One of my favorite wacky days is National Limerick Day. Also held on May 12^th, Limerick Day celebrates the birthday of author Edward Lear, who celebrated limerick poems in his 1846 “Book of Nonsense.”

To celebrate National Limerick Day properly, you must understand the structure of a limerick and write your own. A limerick has five lines in which the last words of line one, two, and five must rhyme. The last word of lines three and four must also rhyme.

Like Lear’s “Book of Nonsense,” limericks should also describe an amusing or comical set of circumstances. Many limericks also make use of puns or hidden meanings of some words in the poem. Since Limerick Day and Kite Day share the same day, the following limerick is a tribute to both remarkable days.

A young man who thought he was bright,
Would argue from morning ‘til night.
When he crawled into bed,
“Let’s be loving” he said,
But his wife answered, “Go fly a kite.”

Copyright 2012 by S. R. Morris