Growing up, I associated May Day with the most virginal girl in the class awkwardly smiling as she placed a crown of flowers on the head of a little Virgin Mary statue. In Hawaii, instead, the holiday is the eclectic result of overzealous Christian missionaries trying to impart foreign traditions to a culture that was already deeply rooted in its own. Today, the result is one of the cutest things I have ever seen -- a pageant takes place at every school in which the elected May Queen, who wears white here too, is crowned and lei'd before the students in each grade come up on stage with a gift for her and then do a hula while singing in both Hawaiian and English in her honor.
The young ones filing in
The kindergarteners lighting it up
The May Queen performing with her Princesses -- all of whom represent a different island
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