Does your church still hold a May Procession/Crowning?

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My parish does a lovely May Crowing. After a Sunday 10:30 mass in May, the congregation gathers in the church garden and one young lady is chosen (by random drawing prior to the crowning) to place a crown on the statue of the Blessed Mother. Hymns are sung there are some prayers. I don’t remember exactly because we didn’t do it yet this year.
 
My parish in South Florida does this every May, usually on Mother’s Day (which I find most fitting). It is done at the end of the main solemn mass for that Sunday and the girls are dressed in blue and the recent recipients of their first Holy Communion are invited to return in the lovely white dresses and suits to participate in the May crowning or Our Lady. I hope it is a tradition that makes a comeback amongst other North American parishes.
 
Yup! 👍 We do a fair bit.

The first weekend in May, after the Saturday evening Mass, we pray the rosary as we process around the block, then conclude with the crowing of Mary by the First Communion kids and Benediction.

That weekend, we also have a simple May Crowning after every Mass.

The RE kids have their own even the week of the last class. We pray the Rosary and everyone brings flowers.

The school also has their own May crowing too.

Then Mary remains at the front of the church for all of May with all her flowers.

And no, we aren’t a particularly traditional parish, fairly middle of the road. Our music director did give a good speech before the Saturday Mass encouraging people to stay for the whole thing. She said that it was the job of people her age and older to pass on these wonderful Catholic traditions to the younger generations. 👍
 
I’m really pleased to read that so many of you belong to parishes which still do the procession/crowning ! The parish I currently belong to does not have a school,(never has ) so they don’t do a formal crowning, but someone does make a crown and places it on the statue but with no “ceremony” (sadly) for the month of May.

Yes ! Your music director is absoluely right that this time honored tradition needs to be retained and passed on to the new generation. We have lost too many of our wonderful rites and ceremonies since Vatican II and we need to get them back, this one in particular, especially for the children.
 
Yes, and the communicants were all in their communion dresses and suits. We also had a living rosary, procession, as well as benediction. It was beautiful, and lots of young families were present.
 
The parish I am currently in has a May Crowning. I had never heard of it until last year, being that no parishes near my hometown had one. Not even the parish I grew up in…St. Mary’s!! It usually takes place about five minutes before Mass starts. Not exactly sure how many people attend the crowning, partly because I’m too busy to really care.

I was a less than pleased with it this year, because a few older parishoners went behind my back and told the Pastor that a certain song was “tradition” in the church. It hadn’t been used since the late 1960’s, and I told the Pastor there was no need for it, and just process with a Marion hymn.
 
Yes, my parish does. This year it was last Sunday afternoon. Since that was Mother’s day and we had a dinner planned with the grandmother’s we couldn’t participate.
 
Our parish still does this. They have the PRE kids do this and they also do the PRE end of year awards/ceremony at the same time.
 
Gardenman said:
I am curious as to how many parishes still have a May Procession and Crowning during this month of Our Lady. This appears to be a tradition which has been done away with in many areas, unfortunately.
What was the reason that this “died out” ? Does anyone know ?
Does YOUR parish retain this lovely custom ?:confused:
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We did it and it was a big enough event (apparently) in our small Southern town that it ended up with a picture in the paper, along with a picture of the first communicants. I was confirmed at Easter vigil last month, so this was my first opportunity to participate in something like this. There were a lot of people who remained after Mass (which is in our parish hall, because our church needs to be enlarged, but it is a historic building, so…slow process) and we gathered and processed over to the Church bearing flowers and some people had ribbons. Our Mary statues were crowned with floral wreaths, and our image of St. Mary Help of Christians, the patron saint of our parish, was displayed with all the flowers we brought.
Here is another example of the Catholic Church redeeming an ancient Pagan custom. The Church has had an amazing ability to adapt the celebrations that people are used to celebrating when they were pagans, and creating new ways to celebrate the Christian faith. Mary, Queen of Heaven, became the true May Queen, and replaced an ancient custom that at times had very sinister motivations (as in the film ‘The Wicker Man’). I love how the Church has, time and again, demonstrated for a fallen world how Christ can redeem all of our actions and practices, if we turn it all over to Him.
Edited to add: I don’t know how one tells if one’s parish is Traditional or not, that term confuses me. Our masses are in English, or Spanish, with some bilingual masses. We have no Latin mass at our parish. However, during Lent some prayers are in Latin, as are most of the songs we tried to sing during the May Procession. And as I said, our parish has a historic building for a church, so the parish is relatively old, but we are still technically a mission territory (even though it is the US, some areas of the Deep South are still Catholic mission territories).
 
Not sure. I just started going to church again this year so I’m not sure if the church I attend does that. The church does have the tradition of bringing flowers to Mary and praying the rosary Monday-Friday during the month of May.
 
Our parish has one. One the first Sunday in May, we combine two of the Sunday Masses.

The children who will be making their First Holy Communion, as well as those who will be Confirmed process in behind the altar boys, each carrying a flower, which is placed by the Statue of Our Lady. The girls who will be Confirmed wear sky blue ‘graduation’ style robes.

One girl, chosen via an Essay contest, will do the actual Crowning during the Homily.

The KofC Honor Guard is also present.

Here are some pics

rickyamin.smugmug.com/St-Cyril-and-Methodius-Slovak/May-Crowning-2010-By-Tim/12085170_BYxiw#858545711_AaLkp
 
This was my first time to get to see one of these. Sounds like not everyone does it exactly the same.
Ours was before Mass on Sunday, all the children were given flowers and took them up front and placed them in a basket in front of our statue of Mary which had been moved and placed on a liftable table, then the priest came in and did some stuff and someone put a little flower crown on the statue (i couldn’t see too well, there was an extremely tall lady standing in front of me) and then the table with the statue was picked up and carried outside and everyone processed around the parking lot singing. This was quite amusing, b/c there’s a small “farm” right next to the chapel with horses, and the horses came up to the fence and watched all of us process by. 😃 Then we went back inside and did the Mass as usual. I thought it was lovely.
 
Our parish will have their May Crowning on Friday during the weekly school Mass. In our brand-new building, the statue of Mary is well over thirty feet above the floor, so a smaller statue will be brought in that a child could reach. All the children will process in and place roses in vases at the base of the statue and one girl will put a crown of flowers on the statue’s head.

Our historic parish will also place a crown on Mary’s statue, but it must be reached by a ladder and the crown is a jeweled brass one.
 
My school (pre K - 8) had ours last week. The kids all bring flowers and each class puts a vase of flowers at the statue. The 2nd graders all bring white flowers for their vases!

One 8th grade girl is May Queen and puts the crown of flowers on the statue. Lovely!
 
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