KENNEBUNK – In 1998, a hallowed Kennebunk tradition – the May Day Festival – was born.

It started simple. That year, the parade “was maybe 20 minutes long, if that, little kids on bicycles and people pushing baby buggies,” said Linda Johnson, the events coordinator in the Parks and Recreation Department. “Merchants on Main Street, they decorated their doors, and it just made it so fun.”

Twenty-six years ago, Johnson was in her first year on the Kennebunk Events Committee, a group that included residents and businesses, which collectively decided that a May Day Festival would add a lot of community benefit. Today, with her role in the Parks and Recreation Department (which she assumed in 2010), she is the key employee of the town working to make the festival happen every year.

One thing is for sure, 26 years later the May Day Festival boasts much more than a small parade.

The festival this year – which will take place on Saturday, May 4 – kicks off with a pancake breakfast at Duffy’s Tavern & Grill between 8 and 10 a.m. Patrons can then head over to Kennebunk Fire Rescue, which is hosting friendly activities at Central Station from 10 a.m. to noon. Those include a CPR education session and a demonstration of EMS equipment. That’s followed by the parade, which starts at 1:30 p.m. on Main Street.

But that’s just a sample of the packed programming that Johnson, the Parks and Recreation Department, the Public Works Department, volunteers, and sponsors have planned. For the first time this year, there will be a kid’s obstacle course, inflatable games, and some “bubble fun,” according to Johnson, on the green space behind Community Outreach Services. There will also be mini golf, food vendors – the list goes on and on.

In many countries, May Day is a commemoration of workers and the labor movement, though historically it has also been a celebration of spring. Johnson said that Kennebunk’s May day Festival is more about that latter, the onset of the new season.

The May Day Festival represents a reminder that “after a long, wet, windy winter, we do have something to look forward to,” she said.

Before COVID-19, the Portland School of Ballet had routinely danced around four maypoles during the festival – but since the pandemic, Johnson has not had luck getting them or another troupe to perform.

Some version of the May Day Festival has taken place almost every year since 1998. “The only year that we … just couldn’t do it, we got totally rained out, was 2005. And then in 2008, it was pouring rain and cold, but we did it anyway.”

One year, during the pandemic, Johnson and others put together May Day basket “kits” and put them at Town Hall for people to pick up. The kits included materials to construct a basket, bubbles, chalk, a pinwheel, and flower seeds. Not even a global pandemic could dampen the May Day spirit.

Johnson remembers that the first time the town put a video of the parade up on the town website, over a decade ago at this point, she had multiple people reach out to her and gush about the nostalgia it conjured for them.

“People said, ‘Oh my gosh, I was in grade school then and I just graduated from college. I can’t believe it’s gone by that (fast.)’,” she remembered.

For Johnson, the day is all about providing “the memories. The good memories.”

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