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May Day--as both a Spring Festival and a festival or the labor proletariat--had as part of its foundations the cerebration of Floralia.
Although the ancient Roman holiday of Floralia began in April, the Roman month of the love goddess Venus, it was really an ancient May Day celebration. Flora, the Roman goddess in whose honor the festival was held, was a goddess of flowers, which generally begin to bloom in the spring.
In this ancient form one might better appreciate the two sides of what May Day has become.
In 238 BC, at the direction of an oracle in the Sibylline books, a temple was built to honor Flora, an ancient goddess of flowers and blossoming plants. It was dedicated on April 28 and the Floralia instituted to solicit her protection (Pliny, Natural History, XVIII.286, cf. Velleius Paterculus, I.14.8, who says 241/240 BC). Sometime later, the festival was discontinued, only to be revived in 173 BC, when the blossoms again that year suffered from winds, hail, and rain (Ovid, Fasti, V.329ff). It was celebrated annually with games (ludi Florales) from April 28 until May 3. These farces and mimes, which received official recognition, were known for their licentiousness. The prostitutes of Rome, who regarded the day as their own, performed naked in the theater and, suggests Juvenal (Satire VI), fought in the gladiatorial arena. In the Circus Maximus, deer and hares, symbols of fertility, were let loose in honor of the goddess as protector of gardens and fields (but not of woods and wild animals) and, instead of the customary white, colorful garments were worn during the festivities, some of which were celebrated at night (Ovid, Fasti, IV.946, V.189-190, 331ff.). Chickpeas (garbanzo beans, another symbol of fertility) also were thrown to the people in the Circus (Persius, Satires, V.177ff). (University of Chicago Encyclopedia Romana).
And thus one understands Floralia as a semiosis of fecundity, and its appetites. It has, from its beginnings celebrates the return to the generative principle of life, and also to the acts of fecundity that pointed to its labor elements--and perhaps the union of both.
The Goddess-Nymph Flora speaks to Ovidus: “Forsitan in teneris tantum mea regna coronis esse putes. tangit numen et arva meum. si bene floruerint segetes, erit area dives: si bene floruerit vinea, Bacchus erit; si bene floruerint oleae, nitidissimus annus, pomaque proventum temporis huius habent. flore semel laeso pereunt viciaeque fabaeque, et pereunt lentes, advena Nile, tuae. vina quoque in magnis operose condita cellis florent, et nebulae dolia summa tegunt. mella meum munus: volucres ego mella daturas ad violam et cytisos et thyma cana voco.' (nos quoque idem facimus tunc, cum iuvenalibus annis luxuriant animi, corporaque ipsa vigent.)”
“Perhaps you may think that I am queen only of dainty garlands; but my divinity has to do also with the tilled fields. If the crops have blossomed well, the threshing-floor will be piled high; if the vines have blossomed well, there will be wine; if the olive-trees have blossomed well, most buxom will be the year; and the fruitage will be according to the time of blossoming. If once the blossom is nipped, the vetches and beans wither, and thy lentils, O Nile that comest from afar, do likewise wither. Wines also bloom, laboriously stored in great cellars, and a scum covers their surface in the jars. Honey is my gift. ‘Tis I who call the winged creatures, which yield honey, to the violet, and the clover, and the grey thyme. (‘Tis I, too, who discharge the same function when in youthful years spirits run riot and bodies are robust.)” Ovid Fasti (V. 261 – 274) (here)
So it may be with all things. We are told that the moderns, those who had been woken, in antiquity viewed this with a certain amount of horror: "Augustine also criticized the celebration of Flora, questioning why it should be debauchery (De Civitate Die, II.27). " And so it is today, by those who would exploit or usurp fecundity, or debase it for other ends (Cf. here).
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