Lei Day in Hawaiʻi: History, Meaning & the Traditions of May 1

Every May 1, flowers, leaves, shells, feathers, music, hula, and extraordinary craftsmanship come together for one of Hawaiʻi’s most distinctive celebrations. The familiar phrase “May Day is Lei Day in Hawaiʻi” captures a tradition that is less than a century old, yet the cultural practice it honors reaches much further into Hawaiian history.

Lei Day celebrates the making, giving, receiving, and wearing of lei. A lei can express affection, honor, congratulations, remembrance, welcome, farewell, or connection to a particular person and place. Although visitors often encounter flower lei first, lei can be created from many materials, including leaves, seeds, shells, feathers, and other carefully gathered natural materials.

The modern Lei Day celebration took shape in Honolulu during the 1920s and soon expanded across the islands. Today, May 1 is filled with lei contests, music, hula, cultural demonstrations, school celebrations, and the simple act of giving someone a lei.

Understanding Lei Day begins with recognizing that a lei is more than a beautiful garland. The materials, the person who gathered them, the hands that fashioned them, the occasion for which the lei was made, and the person who receives it can all be part of its meaning.

🌺 What Is Lei Day?

Lei Day is observed throughout Hawaiʻi on May 1 as a celebration of lei and Hawaiian culture.

Hawaiʻi law designates May 1 each year as “May Day is Lei Day in Hawaiʻi,” although it specifically states that the observance is not a state holiday. Schools, cultural organizations, communities, and families celebrate in different ways, and the best-known public celebration takes place at Kapiʻolani Park in Honolulu.

The day honors an art form that was already deeply rooted in Hawaiian life long before anyone thought of creating an annual Lei Day.

Lei were worn, exchanged, composed about, and connected with people, places, aliʻi, ceremony, beauty, affection, and memory. Modern Lei Day did not invent the importance of lei; it created a particular day on which that importance could be celebrated publicly.

🌿 Lei Are Much Older Than Lei Day

The word “lei” often brings to mind a fragrant circle of flowers, but Hawaiian lei traditions are much broader.

Lei can be fashioned from blossoms, foliage, ferns, seeds, fruit, shells, feathers, and other materials. They may be worn around the neck, on the head, or in other ways depending on the lei and its purpose.

Different methods of construction also create very different forms. A lei kui is made by piercing and stringing materials. Lei haku can be created through a braiding technique that incorporates decorative material into a base, while wili techniques involve winding or twisting materials together.

The materials themselves can carry associations with particular places, people, stories, or occasions. A lei made from plants gathered in one landscape can become a tangible expression of that place.

This is one reason lei are better understood as meaningful creations rather than simply tropical accessories.

❤️ What Does a Lei Mean?

There is no single translation for the meaning of every lei.

A lei may be given for a graduation, wedding, birthday, achievement, welcome, farewell, memorial, performance, or simply as an expression of affection. Context matters, as do the materials and the relationship between the maker, giver, and recipient.

The City and County of Honolulu describes great care being taken in gathering materials and creating a lei, with the spirit of the maker understood as being woven into the finished work. Giving a lei can therefore represent giving something of yourself.

That helps explain why handmade lei can be particularly meaningful. Someone may spend hours selecting, preparing, and arranging materials before the finished lei ever reaches its recipient.

The beauty is not limited to what you see. The time, intention, knowledge, and relationship behind the lei matter too.

🗓️ How Did Lei Day Begin?

The idea for a dedicated Lei Day emerged in Honolulu in the late 1920s.

Writer and artist Don Blanding, who worked for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, became one of the principal advocates for establishing a day devoted to the Hawaiian custom of making, wearing, and giving lei.

Blanding discussed the idea with fellow newspaper writer Grace Tower Warren. Warren suggested connecting the celebration with May Day on May 1 and is credited with the memorable phrase “May Day is Lei Day in Hawaiʻi.”

Historical accounts vary slightly in how they describe the earliest informal activity surrounding the idea, but the first major organized Lei Day celebration and lei competition took place on May 1, 1928.

The concept caught on quickly.

🌸 The First Organized Lei Day

The 1928 celebration helped establish many of the elements that would remain associated with Lei Day.

One of the major events was a lei competition held in downtown Honolulu. Kamehameha Schools’ history of the celebration notes that the competition took place at Bank of Hawaiʻi and that its judges included Princess Abigail Wahiʻikaʻahuʻula Campbell, Elizabeth Lahilahi Webb, who had served Queen Liliʻuokalani, and Lucy Kalanikiʻekiʻe Davis.

The competition drew upon existing associations between the Hawaiian Islands, particular colors, and lei materials that had already developed culturally and had received territorial recognition during the 1920s.

Lei Day therefore did not begin as a simple flower show. From the start, it connected artistry with place, Hawaiian identity, and knowledge of appropriate materials.

In 1929, Territorial Governor Wallace R. Farrington issued a proclamation encouraging the observance of Lei Day and the wearing and display of lei.

🎶 “May Day Is Lei Day in Hawaiʻi”

The phrase created by Grace Tower Warren quickly became inseparable from the celebration.

It was incorporated into the song “May Day Is Lei Day in Hawaiʻi,” written by Leonard “Red” Hawk and Ruth Hawk. The song helped turn a newspaper slogan into something generations of Hawaiʻi residents would recognize.

Music remains central to Lei Day celebrations.

Hawaiian songs, hula, and performances accompany many public events, while school May Day programs have helped generations of children learn songs, dances, island colors, and other cultural traditions.

For many people who grew up in Hawaiʻi, “May Day is Lei Day” is not merely a slogan attached to a tourist event. It evokes school programs, family memories, flowers, rehearsals, music, and the anticipation of May 1.

🏝️ The Islands, Their Colors & Their Lei

Long before modern Lei Day, different Hawaiian Islands had become associated with particular plants, colors, and lei traditions.

These associations became especially visible in pageants, songs, school celebrations, and the early Lei Day competitions. Participants could represent individual islands through particular colors and lei materials, turning the islands themselves into part of the visual language of the celebration.

Some of these materials are flowers, while others are not. Niʻihau, for example, is renowned for its extraordinary shell lei traditions. Other islands are represented through plants such as ʻilima, lokelani, kukui, kaunaʻoa, or lehua.

The important idea is not simply memorizing a chart of eight colors and eight materials. These traditions connect lei with geography.

A lei can carry a sense of where its materials grew, who gathered them, and which island traditions they represent.

🪡 Lei Making Is an Art

A beautifully made lei can appear effortless, but the finished piece hides much of the work that went into it.

Materials must first be gathered or obtained. Flowers and foliage may need to be selected at the correct stage, cleaned, sorted, trimmed, conditioned, or stored carefully so they remain fresh enough to work with.

Then comes construction.

The lei maker must understand how different materials behave, how much will be required, which technique suits the design, how colors and textures interact, and how to create something that remains structurally sound while still appearing graceful.

Highly accomplished lei makers can transform familiar plants into extraordinarily intricate works.

Lei Day competitions celebrate precisely this kind of knowledge and skill.

🌿 Gathering Materials with Care

Making a lei begins before the first flower is strung or leaf is woven.

Knowledgeable gathering means understanding the plant, place, season, and amount that can appropriately be taken. Some plants are abundant; others are rare, protected, culturally significant, or found on lands where collecting requires permission.

Hawaiʻi’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife specifically uses Lei Day as an opportunity to teach responsible gathering practices and the permits required for collecting certain materials in forest reserves.

That is an important part of the tradition to remember.

Admiring a lei should also mean respecting the land that produced its materials.

A beautiful lei made through careless or illegal collecting loses something essential in the process.

👑 What Is the Lei Court?

One of Honolulu’s best-known Lei Day traditions is the Lei Court.

The first Lei Queen, Nina Bowman, was crowned in 1928, and the court became a continuing part of the city’s celebration. Today, members of the Lei Court participate in cultural ceremonies and represent the annual celebration.

The court should not be thought of simply as a beauty pageant.

Selection involves knowledge and presentation of Hawaiian cultural practices, and the court takes part in ceremonial aspects of Lei Day. During Honolulu’s celebration, the Lei Court enters the Kapiʻolani Park bandstand as part of a formal ceremony, receives hoʻokupu, and later opens the lei contest exhibit for public viewing.

The combination of court ceremony, lei artistry, music, and hula gives the Honolulu celebration a character very different from an ordinary flower festival.

🌺 The Honolulu Lei Contest

The annual Lei Contest is one of the highlights of Lei Day at Kapiʻolani Park.

Makers submit lei created in different styles, colors, materials, and techniques. The resulting display can range from elegant single-flower strands to extraordinarily complex works incorporating foliage, seeds, blossoms, and other materials.

The competition is important not simply because prizes are awarded but because it gives masterful lei making a public stage.

Visitors can see techniques and plant combinations they may never encounter in an ordinary lei shop. Experienced makers demonstrate what becomes possible when botanical knowledge, design, patience, and generations of cultural practice come together.

The exhibit also helps reinforce the idea that lei making is an art worthy of serious attention.

🎵 Lei Day at Kapiʻolani Park

Honolulu’s major Lei Day celebration takes place every May 1 at Kapiʻolani Park.

The event includes the Lei Court ceremony, lei contest, Hawaiian music, hula, lei-making demonstrations or workshops, artisans, and other cultural activities. The Royal Hawaiian Band traditionally plays a role in the day’s events.

The setting itself is significant. Kapiʻolani Park bears the name of Queen Kapiʻolani, wife of King Kalākaua, connecting today’s public celebration with a landscape filled with Hawaiian historical associations.

In 2026, Honolulu held its 98th annual Lei Day Celebration there.

Although the event is open to visitors, its value lies precisely in the fact that it is not simply a visitor attraction. It is a living community celebration sustained across generations.

🕊️ What Happens to the Lei After the Contest?

One of the most meaningful Honolulu Lei Day traditions takes place after the crowds at Kapiʻolani Park have gone home.

On May 2, flower lei from the contest are taken to Mauna ʻAla, the Royal Mausoleum, and Kawaiahaʻo Church. There, lei are placed in honor of Hawaiʻi’s aliʻi.

The closing observances may include hula and oli as part of the tribute.

This changes the way the contest itself can be understood. The lei do not simply exist long enough to be judged, photographed, and awarded ribbons.

Their final use can become an act of remembrance.

The flowers move from competition display to places associated with Hawaiian history, monarchy, and memory.

🌼 Lei Are Not Always Made of Flowers

Flower lei may be the most immediately recognizable, but limiting lei to flowers misses much of their variety.

Leaves, ferns, vines, seeds, fruits, feathers, shells, and other materials may all be used depending on the tradition and purpose.

Hulu, or feather, lei demonstrate an especially intricate art. Feathers can be carefully prepared and arranged to create striking designs with remarkable texture and color.

Niʻihau shell lei represent another extraordinary tradition requiring patience, expertise, and very small natural materials gathered from beaches.

Even a simple-looking foliage lei may involve considerable skill in selecting leaves and creating a consistent pattern.

The word “lei” describes a form and tradition much broader than a string of orchids handed out at an airport.

🌺 Giving & Receiving Lei Respectfully

A lei should be treated as a meaningful gift.

When someone gives you a lei, receiving it with gratitude is generally the simplest and most respectful response. There is no need to overcomplicate the moment or perform a version of Hawaiian culture learned from television.

Traditions surrounding presentation can also vary. Modern lei are often placed over a recipient’s head, but historical Hawaiian practices could differ, and the head and back carried particular cultural significance.

Treating the lei carefully afterward is equally important.

Rather than tossing a fresh lei into the trash the moment it begins to fade, people may allow it to dry, hang it somewhere meaningful, compost appropriate plant material, or otherwise return natural materials respectfully.

The exact practice can depend on the lei and the situation, but the principle is straightforward: something given with care should be treated with care.

🌴 Lei Day Is Not the Same as a Lūʻau

It is tempting to turn any discussion of Hawaiian culture into a generic list involving lūʻau, beaches, surfing, and tropical drinks.

Lei Day has a much more specific identity.

It is about lei, their making and meaning, and the ways those traditions connect with Hawaiian music, hula, community, land, history, and remembrance.

A visitor does not need to add an unrelated commercial lūʻau or a sightseeing itinerary to “celebrate Lei Day correctly.”

Attending a genuine community Lei Day event, learning from cultural practitioners, viewing a lei competition, listening carefully to Hawaiian music, or taking a properly taught lei-making class can provide a much more meaningful connection to the day.

The best way to appreciate Lei Day is to pay attention to what Hawaiʻi’s communities themselves are celebrating.

🌿 Lei Day in Schools

May Day programs have become a beloved tradition in many Hawaiʻi schools.

Students may learn hula, songs, oli, or performances representing different islands. Some schools create courts in which students wear colors and lei associated with the islands, continuing traditions that developed through 20th-century May Day celebrations.

These programs can require weeks or months of practice.

Families gather to watch children perform, teachers pass along songs and customs, and a celebration that began in the 1920s becomes part of another generation’s childhood.

That continuity helps explain why Lei Day has endured.

It is renewed each year not only by major public festivals but by thousands of smaller acts: children learning a song, someone gathering foliage, a grandmother teaching a lei technique, or a friend arriving with flowers for someone they love.

💚 Celebrating Lei Day with Respect

You do not need to live in Hawaiʻi to appreciate Lei Day, but appreciation is richer when it begins with learning.

Read about Hawaiian lei traditions from Hawaiʻi-based cultural institutions. Learn the names of the plants used rather than referring to everything simply as “tropical flowers.” If you take a lei-making workshop, seek instruction from knowledgeable practitioners and pay attention to what they teach about gathering, materials, and meaning.

If you are visiting Hawaiʻi on May 1, look for community celebrations rather than treating Lei Day as a theme for a resort party.

Most importantly, remember that Hawaiian culture is contemporary and living.

Lei are not relics left behind by an exotic past, nor are they costumes created for visitors. People continue to make, exchange, wear, teach, sing about, and treasure lei because those practices still hold meaning.

🌺 Why Lei Day Still Matters

Lei Day began as a 20th-century idea, but it endured because it celebrates something much older.

The holiday gave a public stage to an existing Hawaiian art and helped ensure that lei making, lei giving, island traditions, music, and cultural knowledge would remain highly visible as Hawaiʻi changed around them.

Nearly a century later, May 1 still brings people together around flowers, foliage, shells, feathers, songs, hula, memory, craftsmanship, and aloha.

Some lei last only a day before their blossoms begin to fade. Others, made of shells, seeds, or feathers, can endure for generations.

Either way, their value is not measured simply by how long the materials survive.

A lei can hold the memory of who made it, who gave it, why it was given, and where the materials came from. Lei Day celebrates all of those connections—and reminds us that something made by hand can carry far more than flowers.

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📚 Sources & Further Reading

• City and County of Honolulu — Lei Day Celebration
• Hawaiʻi State Legislature — Act 11, Lei Day
• Kamehameha Schools — The History of May Day and Lei Day in Hawaiʻi
• Hawaiʻi Division of Forestry and Wildlife — May Day, Lei Day
• Bishop Museum — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Lei
• GoHawaii — Hawaiian Traditions and Customs