Midsummer
Midsummer or Midsommar is a celebration of the season of summer, taking place on or near the date of the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the longest day of the year. The name midsummer mainly refers to summer solstice festivals of European origin. These cultures traditionally regard it as the middle of summer, with the season beginning on May Day. Although the summer solstice falls on 20, 21 or 22 June in the Northern Hemisphere, it was traditionally reckoned to fall on 23–24 June in much of Europe. These dates were Christianized as Saint John's Eve and Saint John's Day. It is usually celebrated with outdoor gatherings that include bonfires, maypole dancing and feasting.
History
There is evidence that the summer solstice has been culturally important since the Neolithic era, with many ancient monuments throughout Eurasia and the Americas aligned with sunrise or sunset on the summer solstice.In the Julian calendar used in the ancient Roman world, the date of the summer solstice was 24 June, and Marcus Terentius Varro wrote in the 1st century BC that the Romans saw this as the middle of summer. In the city of Rome, it was the festival of the goddess Fors Fortuna. People thronged the River Tiber and rowed in boats to the temples of Fortuna; "after undisclosed rituals they rowed back, garlanded and inebriated".
The Julian calendar had a flaw in that the solstices and equinoxes gradually fell on earlier dates. At the First Council of Nicaea, the Christian Church set the date of the spring equinox to 21 March on the Julian calendar, for the purpose of calculating Easter. This also brought the date of the summer solstice forward to 20 June.
The name 'midsummer' is attested in Old English as midsumor, which meant the summer solstice. It was seen as the middle of summer in Anglo-Saxon England, with the season beginning in early May. Some Anglo-Saxon calendars place midsummer on 24 June while others place it on 20 June. Saint John's Day on 24 June was called middes sumeres mæssedæg or middesumores mæsse.
In England, 24 June continued to be called Midsummer Day and was one of the quarter days of the English calendar. Elsewhere in northern Europe, midsummer and the solstice were traditionally reckoned as the night of 23–24 June.
Sandra Billington says there is no evidence that the pre-Christian Germanic peoples celebrated the summer solstice.
The historian Ronald Hutton says that the "lighting of festive fires upon Saint John's Eve is first recorded as a popular custom by Jean Belethus, a theologian at the University of Paris, in the early twelfth century", but is undoubtedly much older. In England, the earliest reference to this custom occurs in the 13th century AD, in the Liber Memorandum of the parish church at Barnwell in the Nene Valley, which stated that parish youth would gather on the day to light fires, sing songs and play games. A Christian monk of Lilleshall Abbey, in the same century, wrote:
The 13th-century monk of Winchcomb, Gloucestershire, who compiled a book of sermons for Christian feast days, recorded how St John's Eve was celebrated in his time:
Let us speak of the revels which are accustomed to be made on St. John's Eve, of which there are three kinds. On St. John's Eve in certain regions the boys collect bones and certain other rubbish, and burn them, and therefrom a smoke is produced on the air. They also make brands and go about the fields with the brands. Thirdly, the wheel which they roll.... The wheel is rolled to signify that the sun then rises to the highest point of its circle and at once turns back
Saint John's Fires, explained the monk of Winchcombe, were to drive away dragons, which were abroad on St John's Eve, poisoning springs and wells. A Christian interpretation of midsummer fires is that they are "an emblem of St. John the Baptist, who was 'a burning and shining light,' and the preparer of the way of Christ." The fires were also believed to repel witches and evil spirits.
On St John's Day in 1333, Petrarch watched women at Cologne rinsing their hands and arms in the Rhine "so that the threatening calamities of the coming year might be washed away by bathing in the river."
In 1482, German Franciscan friar Paul Walther provided an early documentation of the Albanian traditional practice of lighting fires on Saint John's eve.
In the 16th century AD, English historian John Stow described the celebration of Midsummer:
Saint John's Day is also a popular day for infant baptisms and in the 19th century, "baptisms of children who had died 'pagans' were acted out". In Sweden, young people visited holy springs as "a reminder of how John the Baptist baptised Christ in the River Jordan."
Religious observance
Christian
The early Christian Church designated 24 June as the feast day of the early Christian martyr St John the Baptist, and the observance of St John's Day begins the evening before, known as Saint John's Eve. These are commemorated by many Christian denominations, such as the Roman Catholic Church, Lutheran Churches, and Anglican Communion, as well as by freemasonry. In Sweden, Midsummer is such an important festivity that there have been proposals to celebrate the National Day of Sweden then, instead of on 6 June. There and in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Midsummer is a public holiday. In Denmark and Norway, it may also be referred to as St. Hans Day.In the 4th century AD, the undivided Christian Church made 24 June the feast day of Saint John the Baptist; it marks his birth, which the Gospel of Luke says was six months before Jesus. Christians marked the birth of Jesus on 25 December, the Roman date of the winter solstice, so the feast of St John was set exactly six months earlier.
Within Christian theology, John the Baptist "was understood to be preparing the way for Jesus", with stating "He must increase, but I must decrease"; this is symbolized in the fact that the sun's height in the sky and length of the day "begins to diminish" after the summer solstice and begins to increase after the winter solstice. By the 6th century AD, several churches were dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and a vigil, Saint John's Eve, was added to the feast day. Christian priests held three Masses in churches for the celebration.
Neopagan
Many neopagans celebrate midsummer. As forms of Neopaganism have widely different origins, observances can vary considerably despite the shared name. Some celebrate in a manner as close as possible to how they believe ancient pagans observed the summer solstice, while others observe the holiday with rituals culled from numerous other unrelated sources.At the ancient monument of Stonehenge, in the English county of Wiltshire, many people gather to observe the sunrise alignment with the stones on the summer solstice.
In Neo-druidism, the term Alban Hefin is used for the summer solstice, as coined by the 18th century Welsh Romantic author and prolific literary forger Iolo Morganwg.
Germanic neopagans call their summer solstice festival Litha, which is part of the reconstructed Germanic calendar used by some Germanic Neopagans and takes its name from Bede's The Reckoning of Time that provides Anglo-Saxon names for the two months roughly corresponding to June and July as līða, distinguished in Bosworth and Toller's dictionary as sē ǽrra líða and sē æftera līða with an intercalary third month of līða on leap years or Triliði. In modern times, Litha is celebrated by neopagans who emphasize what they believe to be the reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon Germanic paganism.
Observance by country
Midsummer is traditionally celebrated throughout Europe, including in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Flanders, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and parts of the United Kingdom, as well as other parts of the world: Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, and also in the Southern Hemisphere. In Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Quebec, the traditional Midsummer day, 24 June, is a public holiday. So it was formerly also in Sweden and Finland, but in these countries it was, in the 1950s, moved to the Friday and Saturday between 19 June and 26 June, respectively.Albania
The summer solstice is celebrated by Albanians often with the name Shën Gjini–''Shën Gjoni, but also with the name Festa e Malit or Festa e Bjeshkës, as well as Festa e Blegtorisë''. It is associated with the production in agricultural and livestock activities.To celebrate this feast, bonfires are traditionally lit where straw is burned and ashes are thrown on the ground, as a "burning for regeneration" ritual. Tribal or community fires are traditionally made with straw, with people jumping across them. In some regions, plumes of burning chaff were carried in the air, running through the fields and hills. The ashes of the straw that burned in the ritual fires of this event are traditionally thrown to the field for good luck.
During this feast sheep shearing is traditionally performed by shepherds.