May Day

It's kind of funny to think that May Day, a holiday where people seemingly arbitrarily hand out cups of candy to their neighbors out of the kindness of their hearts, has such strong ties to communism. This May Day, myself and two friends put together twenty some May Day baskets for our friends, ourselves and our mothers. It started with Mohammad tweeting out and asking if anybody wanted some and after several people requested them we got together and decided to do this thing for real. The best thing about it was just the feeling that I was doing this small, kind gesture for people that I didn't really even know (most of our recipients were friends of Mohammad that I had absolutely no relations with). It made me want to do this sort of thing all the time, just nice little gestures and such.

I should probably discuss our selection process for the May Day baskets. It was actually a half hour long process with lots of decisions to be made. We made it clear that we wanted a good balance of sweet and savory in our baskets and so there was much deliberation between which candies to choose. We knew that we needed two fruit based candies and two chocolates. After some thought, we decided to go with Lifesavers gummies and Starbursts for our fruit flavored candies. A large bag of chocolate stars would compensate for the lack a diversity in the chocolate spectrum. Now we needed a filler. Something to take up the majority of the volume of our May Day baskets because a basket with sheer candy is just too expensive to provide. For the filler, we chose Chex Mix. We bought two bags just to be safe, and mixed all of the ingredients together. We thought that Chex Mix would be a good change of pace filler because most May Day baskets have popcorn which is really boring and expected in May Day baskets. I believe that our choice of Chex Mix was superior because it was not only more diversified but it is a universally known fact that Chex Mix is in every way possible more delicious than popcorn.

When we were all done with our baskets, we gave them to Mohammad so that he could pass them out the next day at school. In the end, they were a hit. Everybody loved them and I think it was our conscientious decision making process that really made the difference between our baskets and your every-day, run-of-the-mill popcorn-filled May Day disgraces. I plan on participating in May Day for many years to come because making the baskets and handing them out are equally as fun and rewarding.