Why Is ‘Midsummer’ at the Beginning of Summer?

Midsummer Eve Bonfire on Skagen Beach (1906), an artistic depiction of the traditional Danish bonfire.

Many people in the Northern Hemisphere celebrate Midsummer’s Eve and Day. This ancient celebration is associated with the summer solstice this weekend.

It is especially important in the Scandinavian countries where the arrival of summer after a long winter is even more of a cause for celebration.

Midsummer was traditionally celebrated on June 24, which is the feast day of St. John the Baptist. But the holiday has its origin in a pre-Christian pagan solstice festival. The Catholic Church decided early on that rather than ban pagan festivals, they co-opted them by connecting them to Christian celebrations.

But why call it MID-summer when it occurs at the start of summer?  I learned the answer in a college Shakespeare class when I asked that question during our study of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This day marks the MIDpoint of the growing season being halfway between planting and harvest (April-September).

This day is one of four “quarter days” in the wheel of the year.

Feel free to do some feasting, dancing, and singing in this nice part of summer before the hot summer days arrive. June 24 is the traditional date of Midsummer Day, but it is often celebrated on the closest weekend to June 24 – so keep the party going until the 24th.

Summer and Fathers

Down the Shore

There are three events you might be marking or celebrating this weekend.

The summer solstice, which marks the official start of the season in the Northern Hemisphere is June 20. (The Southern Hemisphere has to wait for December for summer.) The summer solstice is when the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky and is the day with the longest period of daylight. At the Arctic circle there is continuous daylight around the summer solstice.

According to Wikipedia, the summer solstice is also known as estival solstice – a term I have never heard used – and as Midsummer.

Midsummer is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice. Those celebrations take place on a day between June 19 and June 25 and the preceding evening. The celebration predates Christianity, and existed under different names and traditions around the world.

Father’s Day is this Sunday and celebrates fathers and fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. I only learned this year that the tradition is said to be started from a memorial service held for a large group of men who died in a mining accident in Monongah, West Virginia in 1907. That seems to be quite an odd way for this holiday to have started. It was first proposed as a national day in 1909 and is celebrated in the United States annually on the third Sunday in June.

I will celebrate the solstice at the beach, which has always meant summer for me. Here in New Jersey, we don’t go to the beach – we go “down the shore.”

“Midsummer” always seemed to me to be an odd name for a time when summer is just beginning. You can celebrate Midsummer’s Day or Midsummer’s Eve. Shakespeare gave the night a big boost.

I’ll spend Father’s Day with both of my sons, and my younger son is a new father, so the day will be more special than in some years. My family, past and present, has spent many summers down the shore, but not always for the solstice or Father’s Day.  All holidays are really personal celebrations in some way.

Down the shore with my father and sister on a father’s Day many years ago.

St. John’s or Midsummer’s Eve

Illustration from a vintage edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (public domain

“Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking.” – Swedish proverb

I’m sure you think of this summer as being new and young, but tonight is Midsummer Night’s Eve, also called St. John’s Eve. This holiday goes back to the time of Old English and the Anglo-Saxon calendar that divided the year into only two parts instead of our 4 seasons. On this calendar with only summer and winter (each being 6 months long), summer ran from April through September) makes now midsummer. It also placed the time at or near the solstice.

St. John is the patron saint of beekeepers and this was a time of full hives and the time to use that honey to make honey wine, popularly known as mead. We believe that it was Irish monks during medieval times who learned to ferment honey and make mead.

The June Full Moon was called the Mead Moon and mead supposedly enhanced virility and fertility and was an aphrodisiac. This led mead to be part of Irish wedding ceremonies, and contributed to the idea of a honeymoon, referring to the literal moon and also the first sweet month of those June marriages.

Many people know the holiday because of Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is set on this night. The comedy of two young couples who wander into a forest outside Athens on this night which is known for magic proves’ Shakespeare’s premise that “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

In England, this night was once an established holiday celebration. For the fairies, this night was second only to Halloween in importance. These “Faeries” enjoyed making mischief with humans.

This may be a short night (the summer solstice being the shortest night) but celebrants made the most of it. They would light bonfires after sundown. This “setting the watch” kept bad spirits at bay, and gave light to the revelers who also might carry cressets (lanterns atop poles) d bedecked in garlands, along with dancers, and some dressed as a unicorn, a dragon, and the six hobby-horse riders.

Flowers of St. John’s Wort

Having a party at your home tonight? Decorate the door with birch, fennel, and the herb St John’s wort. That herb is so named because it commonly produces blossoms that are harvested at this time. “Wort” is a Middle English word (wort, wurt, wyrte) simply meaning a plant, that in Old English wyrt was used for any herb, vegetable, plant, crop, or root. Tonight or on St. John’s Feast Day (June 24) hanging this herb on doors would ward off evil spirits, harm, and sickness for man and beast.

The plant is in the genus name Hypericum is possibly derived from the Greek words hyper (above) and eikon (picture), in reference to the tradition of hanging these plants over religious icons in the home during St John’s Day.

In modern times and still today, many people use St. John’s Wort as a medicinal herb as a mild antidepressant. The plant itself is actually poisonous to livestock.

Tree worship was also part of Midsummer festivities and trees near wells and fountains were decorated with colored cloths. This was especially true for oak trees, as the Oak King ruled the waxing of the year and the oak tree symbolizes strength, courage, and endurance.

The Oak has always been particularly significant at Litha, the name Germanic neopagans use for the summer solstice festival Litha. In their ancient calendar, June and July were se Ærra Liþa and se Æfterra Liþa (the “early Litha month” and the “later Litha month”).

The Celtic name for Oak is ‘Duir’ which means ‘doorway’ and so this was the time when we enter the doorway into the second, waning part of the year.

A Midsummer’s Night

Trailer from one of the many versions of Shakespeare’s play – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1999

It doesn’t seem correct that today could be Midsummer Night’s Eve here in Paradelle (Northern hemisphere) since summer just started yesterday. But the origin of this term comes from Old English and we need to remember that the old Anglo-Saxon calendar had only two seasons: summer and winter.

Dividing the year in half and giving 6 months to summer – April through September – would put mid-summer near the middle of our June and close to the solstice. It seems to have been a date that varied and the solstice (which could be marked precisely even by people of that time) might have been an easy way to remember and mark the date.

Summer started in mid-April in the old Icelandic calendar and on the Anglo-Saxon calendar, it was marked as whenever the full moon appeared.

The marking of a Midsummer Day may have varied but when Christianity enters, the celebration of Saint John’s Eve on a particular day was set by the church.

Midsummer may simply have been more of a period of time centered upon the summer solstice, between June 21 and June 24.

European midsummer-related holidays, traditions, and celebrations are pre-Christian in origin. They are particularly important in Northern Europe – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania – but are also found in Germany, Ireland, parts of Britain (Cornwall especially), France, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, other parts of Europe. It is not as popularly celebrated in Canada, the United States and Puerto Rico.

It is marked in the Southern Hemisphere (mostly in Brazil, Argentina and Australia) as an imported European celebration that marks Midwinter.

For Americans, it is a time when after many spring flowers and clover have bloomed, the hives are full of honey. Saint John was the patron saint of beekeepers. One name given to this month’s full moon was the Mead Moon because much of that honey was fermented to make the honey wine called mead.

This time is also connected to the origin stories for the word “honeymoon” and is often associated with lovers and marriages. An old Swedish proverb says, “Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking.

If you have a fairy housein your backyard or come across one in the woods, this could be a good night to spot its occupants. It might also be a night to be wary of the tricks those spirits may be apt to try on humans tonight.

William Shakespeare used these associations in his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is set on this night which he portrays as one full of magic when the fairy kingdom would play pranks on people. In the play, two young couples wander into a forest outside Athens that is full of fairies who amuse themselves by playing with the human lovers’ emotions. Although “The course of true love never did run smooth,” in his comedy, things do eventually work out for the lovers and the fairies..

Midsummer Night’s Eve

Tonight is Midsummer Night’s Eve, even though for those of us in the Northern hemisphere summer has only just started.

The origin of the naming of this as midsummer comes from Old English and we need to acknowledge that the old Anglo-Saxon calendar had only two seasons, summer and winter.

Dividing the year in half for a “Midsummer’s Day” would have put the day near the middle of summer in June.  It probably wasn’t an exact day marked universally. Summer started in mid-April in the old Icelandic calendar and on the Anglo-Saxon calendar, it was marked as whenever the full moon appeared.

The marking of midsummer may have varied but the celebration of Saint John’s Eve on this day was set by the church.  Saint John is the patron saint of beekeepers.

This is a time when after many spring flowers and clover have bloomed, the hives are full of honey. One name given to this month’s full moon was the Mead Moon because much of that honey was fermented to make the honey wine called mead.

This is also one of the origin stories for the word “honeymoon” and so it became known as a time for lovers.

That is why Shakespeare set his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream on this night.The night also gained a reputation as a time of magic when the fairy kingdom would play pranks on people.

The tale is of two young couples who wander into a magical forest outside Athens full of fairies who play with the lovers’ emotions. “The course of true love never did run smooth,” wrote Shakespeare, but being a comedy, things do eventually work out for the lovers.

An old Swedish proverb says, “Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking.

Dreaming on a Midsummer’s Night

European midsummer-related holidays, traditions, and celebrations are pre-Christian in origin, but tonight, the evening of June 23,  St John’s Eve, is the eve of celebration before the Feast Day of Saint John the Baptist. This feast day is one of the very few saints’ days to mark the supposed anniversary of the birth, rather than the death, of the saint commemorated.

Although Midsummer celebrations originated as a pagan holiday, the Feast of Saint John coincides with the June solstice also referred to as Midsummer. The Christian holy day is fixed at June 24, but, in some countries, festivities are celebrated the night before, on St John’s Eve. (It is six months before Christmas because Luke 1:26 and Luke 1.36 imply that John the Baptist was born six months earlier than Jesus, although the Bible does not say at which time of the year this happened.)

Solstice celebrations still center around the day of the astronomical summer solstice. Some choose to hold the rite on the 21st of June, even when this is not the longest day of the year, and some celebrate June 24th, the day of the solstice in Roman times.

The wise people of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Quebec (Canada) celebrate the traditional Midsummer day, June 24, as a public holiday.

Titania is the Queen of the Fairies and may be a tougher ruler than her husband Oberon. But anything can happen on a Midsummer Night, and, according to Mr. Shakespeare, she is enchanted that night to fall in love with a mere mortal man.

My first exposure to all this was Shakespeare A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream whose setting originally confused me since I never considered June to be the middle of summer.

In England, it was the ancient custom on St. John’s Eve to light large bonfires after sundown, which served the double purpose of providing light to the revelers and warding off evil spirits. This was known as ‘setting the watch’.  People often jumped through the fires for good luck.

Streets were lined with lanterns, and people carried cressets (pivoted lanterns atop poles) as they wandered from one bonfire to another. These wandering, garland-bedecked bands were called a ‘marching watch’.  They might be accompanied by dancers, and traditional players dressed as a unicorn, a dragon, and six hobby-horse riders.

Late night parties were held to stay up throughout the whole of this shortest night of the year. You might even spend the night keeping watch in the center of a circle of standing stones to gain the power of poetic inspiration.

This was also the night when the serpents of the island would roll themselves into a hissing, writhing ball in order to engender the ‘glain’, also called the ‘serpent’s egg’, ‘snake stone’, or ‘Druid’s egg’.  Anyone in possession of this hard glass bubble would wield incredible magical powers.

At one time in Britain, Midsummer Night was second only to Halloween for its importance to the Faeries, who especially enjoy causing mischief. Want to see the Faeries? Gather fern seed at the stroke of midnight and rub it onto your eyelids.

Of course, you might be led astray by Pixies unless you carry some Rue in your pocket. Also try turning your jacket inside-out, or crossing a stream of “living” water.

If you want to decorate for a party, adorn the front door, with birch, fennel, St. John’s wort, orpin, and white lilies. Five plants were thought to have special magical properties on this night: rue, roses, St. John’s wort, vervain and trefoil.  Good luck finding those at Home Depot.