MONTAGUE CENTER — While the pandemic and the loss of community members scored small victories against the village’s decades-old May Day tradition over the past few years, the celebration will make its long-awaited return on Sunday.

Put on hold throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Montague Center’s annual day of song and dance has been customary for more than 30 years, according to Assistant Town Planner and RiverCulture Director Suzanne LoManto, who handled this year’s permitting. It is derived from Celtic, British and otherwise European roots as a celebration of life and fertility intended to “wake up” the Earth after a long winter and prepare for a successful summer season.

Montague Center’s ceremony, held on the first Sunday of May, involves a 17-foot flower-wreathed “maypole” centrally positioned within a crowd of singers, dancers and instrumentalists. Many who contribute to the performance, she said, are merely locals with a hunger for joy.

“The whole point of it is that it’s organic,” she said.

LoManto stressed that the tradition is upheld by the community’s enthusiasm and requires minimal structure. At its core, though, it had always been supported and cultivated by founders Rose Sheehan and late fiddler David Kaynor, who died in June 2021 following a battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

“It really tugs at my heart to know that he won’t be there this year,” Sheehan said.

Sheehan spoke fondly of Kaynor’s involvement as not only an organizer, but the ceremony’s lead musician. All but once over the course of 30-plus years, she reminisced, Kaynor was present with his fiddle, heading a congregation of dancers and musicians playing violins, horns, woodwinds, drums and accordions.

“When it would come to gathering people for this May event,” Sheehan said, “there would be scores and scores of people coming because they wanted to be part of the musicians David was central to.”

Kaynor’s condition declined throughout the pandemic. Sheehan said that in 2019, the community foresaw that this would be the case and made an effort to enjoy May Day while the fiddler was still well enough to celebrate.

“I think all of us understood indirectly that we were doing something for the last time,” she recalled.

Come May Day in 2021, a month before Kaynor’s death, members of the community held an “impromptu gathering” at Kaynor’s house to sing and dance in a “small tribute” as Kaynor’s health incapacitated him and the pandemic incapacitated the ceremony.

“It was really good to be with him then,” Sheehan said.

This year, Sheehan said, fiddler Susan Conger will pick up where Kaynor left off to lead the festival’s music. With pandemic restrictions largely lifted and residents eager to celebrate again, though, Sheehan has confidence that those who attend will still “feel his legacy in a very positive way.”

“You’ll see people loving being with each other,” she said.

May Day festivities will begin at around 10 a.m. on the Montague Center common.

Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-772-0261, ext. 261 or jmendoza@recorder.com.

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