May Day Festivals in America, 1830 to the Present - Thompson, Allison

Starting in the early 1830s, American girls and women began to hold Old English May Day festivals, complete with maypole dances, the crowning of a May Queen, and romantic plays and pageants. These festivals accelerated in popularity after 1900 at colleges and universities across the country. This thorough history examines the creation and development of the traditional American May Day festival.