Midsummer is a celebration of the season of summer usually held at a date around the summer solstice. It has pagan pre-Christian roots in Europe.
The early Christian Church designated June 24 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 June 6. 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.
History
Studies of culturally important phenomena in the sky indicate the timing of the summer solstice has been observed since the Neolithic era, with many ancient monuments in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas aligned with sunrise or sunset on the summer solstice.
The name 'midsummer' is attested in Old English as midsumor, and refers to the time around the summer solstice. Astronomically, the solstice falls on 21 June, but traditionally in northern Europe the solstice and midsummer was reckoned as the night of 23–24 June, with summer beginning on May Day.
Likewise, in the ancient Roman world, the traditional date of the summer solstice was 24 June, and Marcus Terentius Varro wrote in the 1st century BC that 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".
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 (Christmas) 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.
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 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 the 16th century AD, the English historian John Stow, described the celebration of Midsummer: