Canaan Years - May Baskets

We weren't in Canaan very long before our friends educated us about their tradition of hanging Maybaskets. I had never heard such a thing! All winter long, we heard of previous Maybaskets and plans for this year's.

RULES

1. can be played anytime in May

2. newcomers and graduates

are typical "victims"

3. baskets can be made of anything

(filled with candies)

4. those caught help catch the others

5. boundaries set according to area

(usually included woods and fields)

6. "curfew" usually around 9 PM)

(about an hour after sunset)

7. OPTIONAL: kiss the one you catch

The church members pulled a Maybasket on our family, of course. My father happened to be in his study with the window open and caught one boy before the cry "MAY BASKET" was even called.

Every May, we ran and crawled and climbed over the whole town. Each person had their own "war story" of how they got scraped by a barbed wire fence or ripped their pants in a tree or fell into a patch of poison ivy. I loved it! Schedules and property lines were blurred during the month of May. "We were doing a Maybasket" was an accepted excuse for almost anything.

Did I ever get a kiss? I'm not telling. *smile*