Patrick McCollum

Patrick McCollum
A little piece of Beltane history:
In 1992, I was recommended by the University of California to the Attorney General of California to become the first government Wiccan Chaplain in the United States. Amongst other issues, inmates were requesting to be able to celebrate Beltane and seven other Pagan holidays in prisons in California. When I met with prison officials, they were adamant that this would never be allowed.

As one who believes in religious equality and equal treatment under the law, I decided to make the celebration of Beltane in US prisons a personal goal. At the time, there were dozens of religious holidays and celebrations held in our nation’s prisons, but they were all Christian.
I took on the entire California Department of Corrections, and after many challenging meetings and confrontations, including death threats to me, I won the right for Beltane to be celebrated and to have a May Pole and a May Pole dance in prison. It was the first time in history that this had been done, and it changed everything!

Our first Maypole in prison was made of cardboard and was only six feet tall, and our ribbons were made from computer paper which was colored and decorated with colored highlighters. 8 men danced and celebrated at California Correctional Institution at a level 4 (Maximum security) facility. It was an amazing thing to watch eight tough inmates get up and dance around a pole with ribbons, and shortly, all eight were crying. The second year that the dance was in place, we had forty inmates participating. While this might not seem so profound at first view, know that later, there was a major riot that took place at that prison which was very serious, and that involved nearly a thousand men. During the investigations after the riot, it was discovered that out of the thousand men involved, only a small group of forty had laid down on the ground and refused to participate in violence. All forty of those men were the ones had danced the May Pole! This led to the MayPole being approved in fourteen California institutions.

Following that, I was contacted by a female prisoner in a Federal prison in Florida wanting a maypole celebration. Again, it was a huge battle, but in the end, I got her her May Pole, and ultimately got the May Pole approved by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Over the next number of years, I flew across the country to meet with prison officials from many states, and shared with them some of the stories of how the May Pole celebration had changed inmates in positive ways. These initial meetings eventually evolved into gaining rights not only for Pagan sacred celebrations, they also opened doors for Native Americans and South Sea Islanders, and Buddhists and dozens of others.

There are many profound and amazing stories about the May Poles and the Beltane celebrations in prisons across the country, and I hope to write a book about it all some day, but in summary, not only did inmates change their behavior, Prison Gangs declared the Beltane celebrations as safe ground where gang members held truce so that they could dance together. We even had a Warden join in, and several times custody staff participated.

For me, the most profound moment came in a women’s institution where over a hundred women from multiple gangs came to dance the May Pole. At the beginning of the celebration, they broke up into their respective gangs and took position as groups on different sides of the Pole. This time, the Pole was 20 feet tall with sixty foot long ribbons. I made the May Pole out of plastic pipe with a base that just sat on the ground. When the hundred women started dancing, it became clear that some gangs were stronger than others, and the Pole began to bend and nearly break from the force pulled on the ribbons on those gang’s sides. Spontaneously, the gang leaders stopped the dance and conferred, and then announced that the only way the dance could work was for members of the stronger gangs to leave their groups, and to partner with their sisters from rival gangs to even out the force against the Pole. It was like magic. Women changed positions, and they partnered with their other sisters, until the Pole remained steady and upright throughout the dance. That particular dance lasted for over two hours, and it ended with women from rival gangs decorating each other with flowers.

Over the course of twenty years, I introduced Beltane and the May Pole dance into state and federal prisons all across the country.
I built and transported a whole slew of May Poles to be used in prisons over those years, and I shared the beauty of all of the different colors of ribbons woven together on those poles with inmates for years, as a message that when we come together as one, with all of our unique and colorful differences, we create peace and harmony for all!

I have included a picture of the special May Pole that brought all of the gangs together so many years ago. It now sits among several other May Poles out in the forest where I live. I go out there every May 1st, and see that the colors and the diversity and the beauty of all of those women’s lives are still brightly interwoven in the colorful ribbons and peaceful intentions that they set in place that day.

I share this because we often think that there is little that we can do to make a difference in this world, but as you can see, a few pieces of plastic pipe, and some ribbon, combined with a vision of a better future, can have far more power than we can imagine.
On this Beltane, I would like to thank all of the men and women in prison who danced the May Pole with me all of those years, and who taught me that peace is possible, and that there is always hope.

Have a Blessed Beltane,
Patrick McCollum