Ritualized springtime celebrations traditionally have promised therapeutic release.

May 1 celebrates both International Tuba Day and historic labor protests globally.

Current May 1 protests highlight democracy, healthcare, and anti-war sentiments.

It may have escaped your attention: Today, May 1, is International Tuba Day.

Distinguished as the largest of all brass instruments that delivers the lowest, mellowest tone, the tuba nonetheless often oom pah pahs in an invitingly comic way. While tuba’s booms presage the appearance of movie monsters (think King Kong, Godzilla, Jaws, or Jabba the Hut), the big horn more memorably accompanies the debut of circus clowns and the pratfalls of cartoon characters.

Bugs Bunny, appearing as a conductor, memorably tormented a haughty operatic tenor with a tuba in “Long Haired Hare” (1943), sabotaging his performance. (On early Saturday mornings in the late ‘50s, local stations played the cartoon over and over and over; that’s how I know it by heart.) The singer, Giovanni Jones, you see, outraged at the rabbit’s jazzy rendition of “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba,” had damaged Bugs’ banjo. And Bugs was out for revenge.

It’s somehow fitting that May 1 should be International Tuba Day, because if there has been a traditional day of play, the first of May—halfway between the equinox of spring and the solstice of summer—is it. It’s also a day to even the score, but more of that below.

The celestial occasion hints at Iron Age roots. In central Europe, where the winters are long, dark, and cold, celebrants welcomed spring with Walpurgisnacht, where men dressed as bears would throw snowballs at the harbingers of spring. Bonfires showed the way. And in Celtic Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, even today, neo-pagan revelers nod to the ancient........

© Psychology Today