Bubble gum, cheese puffs, hard candy, licorice, popcorn, pretzels, suckers and other assorted treats accompanied by pastel-colored ribbons wrapped around the basket handle created a May Day basket.

“A May-basket is — well, I hardly know how to describe it; but ‘tis something to be hung on a door," a reporter explained in the Sterling, III., Gazette in 1871, according to NPR.org. ...

while others welcome May Day at dawn with Morris dancers, and maypole games. Others are more intimate, such as the tradition of May baskets, where people anonymously leave baskets of flowers ...