Category Archives: Solstice

Jun 23 2014
3 Comments
Midsummer, Solstice, St. John's Eve

Midsummer Night’s Dreaming

Juhannusjuhlat

And now it is Old Midsummer: St. John’s Eve. It is a night that will go by unnoticed by most Americans, but in other cultures it is the beginning of the midsummer revels with good food, storytelling, divination and games, and, most especially, bonfires. This is especially true in Scandinavia, where the days at this time of year are particularly long. In Helsinki, the sun will shine for nearly 19 hours today. The sun has just passed its northernmost point in the sky with the solstice two days ago, and already it is progressing toward the opposite of that. Come December, that 19 hours in Helsinki will be of darkness. And in these Lands of the Midnight Sun, these lands of polar opposites, a celebration marking each of these events should come as no surprise.

While we in the States (at least in the Lower 49) are all too familiar with the celebration surrounding the Winter Solstice, the celebration of St. John’s Eve and St. John’s Day at the summer solstice has never gained much of a foothold here. My partner’s cousin married a woman from Sweden and they settled in California and when Ulrika’s first St. John’s Eve in the States arrived, she was pretty disappointed. Yes, she could create a celebration of her own, but part of the charm of most St. John’s Eve celebrations is the communal atmosphere. Folks from the community typically gather and celebrate together, outdoors in the night filled with sunlight, at a communal bonfire, and there was none of that for Ulrika in California.

Even here in Lake Worth, where businesses like Polar Bakery and Midnight Sun Motel are signs of the largest community of Finns outside of Finland, not much will be happening tonight that I am aware of. There was a bonfire on Saturday, the night of the solstice this year, at the American-Finnish Community Club west of town. But that was on Saturday and tonight, as far as I know, the field out behind the Club will remain dark.

Community or not, the power to celebrate a day is within each of us. Lighting a fire in your own backyard fire pit or even just lighting a candle is, I think, a fine way of honoring this ancient celebration. I hope Ulrika is doing at least as much. I hope she is serving pickled herring and new potatoes with sour cream, and eating strawberries by the fire, all part of the traditions in her Swedish homeland.

In other parts of Europe, St. John’s Eve is a night to go and gather fern seed for its magical properties. Gathered at the proper time, fern seed was thought to confer the power of invisibility upon the person who held it. Gathering it comes not without some peril, however: the seeds are fiercely guarded by the fairy folk. Be that as it may, this is the only night to do so for their magical properties. And of course the gathering of St. John’s Wort would be done tonight. Hang a clump of this herb at windows and doors to keep evil away.

As with Christmas in December, it is the eve that is the period of the holiday that is more charged with magic and mystery. And for St. John’s Eve, no one has done a better job of conjuring that magic than William Shakespeare. His comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream is set on this night and tunes into folk belief that the portals between worlds are more easily transgressed on nights just like this. There is no better time of year to read his play again or to watch the film (the 1999 adaptation by Michael Hoffman, starring Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania and Rupert Everett as Oberon is really quite good), and if you are in a place where the play is being performed tonight, well, you should not even think twice about what to do: go.

Even if all you do is eat a fresh strawberry, do something to mark this magical night, and if you can, do it outdoors. To take part in marking this night is to take part in something bigger than ourselves, bigger than our problems and cares. It is to take part in the community of folks marking this night across the centuries, and that is community indeed. Happy Midsummer.

 

Image: Last year’s solstice bonfire at the American-Finnish Community Club. Even in the heat of a Florida summer night, we love a good bonfire.

 

Jun 20 2014
3 Comments
Solstice, St. John's Eve

Summer Solstice

RoyalPoinciana

Here in the Northern Hemisphere the days have been lengthening since December, and tomorrow comes the point where that age-old dance shifts steps: It is the longest day of the year tomorrow, June 21. The summer solstice occurs this year on Saturday morning at 6:51 here in Lake Worth, is Eastern Daylight Time (should you wish to calculate for your part of the world). We have reached the opposite side of where we were at Midwinter on the 21st of December. The sun reaches its northernmost point in the sky and then, after 6:51 AM, begins the journey south again.

It is our planet’s tilt that changes, not the sun. And in the process of our great blue globe’s shifting, the sun will appear, for a couple of days at least, to be still, and this is the source of our word solstice (from the Latin sol stetit, “sun stands still”).  I like to ponder this immense globe that is our home and the mechanics of this constant shifting, but these are the thoughts that make my head hurt after a while. It is the pondering of immense things, and yet there are things so much more immense to ponder.

With the solstice, summer begins by the almanac. By traditional reckoning of time, however, summer has been with us since May Day, and this is why you will often hear this time of year referred to as Midsummer. And just as the birth of Christ was set at the winter solstice by the early Church, it was the birth of St. John that they placed at the opposite side, the summer solstice, and just as the world seems more magical at Christmastime, there are many mysteries surrounding the nights and days to come, especially St. John’s Eve on June 23rd. These junctions of time have long been considered times when it easier to cross between worlds seen and unseen. And whether these ideas are the stuff of folklore or of science (many astrophysicists suggest that the universe we know may be one of many parallel universes), if you are okay with an occasional willing suspension of disbelief, there is potential in these Midsummer nights for real beauty, real magic. It is the time to read Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or to watch the film version or, if you’re really lucky, to see it on stage. (An outdoor stage under the Midsummer stars? Even luckier.) It’s also a great time for a bonfire, which is traditional in many cultures for these Midsummer nights, whether it be solstice night or St. John’s Eve. Here in Lake Worth, the Finnish-American Club west of town will be having a Midsummer bonfire on Saturday night.

Our ancestors knew these were important nights to mark and celebrate. Even if it’s just the lighting of a candle, you’ll have done something to honor the day and the spiral dance of time. The only thing that stays the same is change. Come St. John’s Day on Tuesday, sunlight will have been diminishing slightly for three days as our dance once more shifts toward the next solstice in December. For now, though, the gentle season of summer is ours.

 

Image: The Royal Poincianas, a sure sign of the Summer Solstice in Florida, are all abloom now in Lake Worth. If you’ve never seen a Royal Poinciana, they are deciduous trees that explode in red blossoms each June before their lacy leaves appear. Summer here is not subtle.

 

Jan 06 2014
Christmas, Epiphany, La Befana, Solstice, The Gift Bearers

An Epiphany

Magi

TWELFTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
Epiphany

It’s Epiphany, the day the Magi arrived in Bethlehem to see the child. Children in Italy have awoken to presents delivered over the course of the night by la befana, and in Spain and throughout Latin America, los tres reyes, the three kings, have done the same job. Today, la befana will be back to her housework, back to her sweeping, sweeping the holidays away until the winter solstice returns again next December. An old Italian saying sums it up: E l’epifania tutte le feste porta via.

Most of what we know of the Magi comes down through tradition and not through biblical writings. The story is that there were three wise men and that their names were Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, but in fact we don’t know their names for sure or how many there were. We do know, however, that there were three gifts. It’s an old, old story that we know well. The Magi followed the star, finally arrived at the place where Jesus lay, paid homage to him, and brought gifts to the child, gifts fit for royalty: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Epiphany is a Greek word, meaning “manifestation.” The local shepherds were the first to come see the child in the manger, but with the Magi, who came from far off kingdoms, the child was made manifest to the world. Epiphany has another meaning, as well, one that James Joyce spoke of, in which characters in stories, people in general, suddenly see things differently. The two kind of go hand in hand. Nothing would ever be the same after that first Christmas night, and nothing is ever the same after a personal epiphany, either.

And so with this night, our celebration of Christmas winds down. While Twelfth Night brings us raucous revelry, Epiphany is generally quieter. The day will proceed much like any other––here in the United States, for most of us it’s just another day at work. Even the Church in this country moves the date of Epiphany to a Sunday (it was yesterday by most church calendars), but traditionalists prefer to keep its date as it always was. In this house, we will celebrate with a quiet dinner. We’ll enjoy the music and the greenery and lights for one last night. And some time in the still quiet of this night, we’ll gather up the people in our home, step out onto the front porch, bundle up if it’s cold outside, and we’ll take turns writing with chalk above the front door the numbers and letters of a traditional inscription: 20+C+M+B+14. These are the initials of each of the Magi, punctuated by crosses and surrounded by the year. The chalk is supposed to be blessed chalk, but I doubt there are many priests left who remember this old tradition and who bother to bless chalk for their congregations, so I think any chalk would be fine, blessed or not. The writing is usually accompanied by a silent prayer that we’ll all be together to do this again next year. The inscription, a magic charm of protection and a reminder of the season, remains there for all to see and it weathers the year, sometimes washing away to a ghost of itself by the following year, and sometimes remaining as vibrant as ever.

After tonight, we might light the candles in our windows, but the Christmas lights outside will no longer be lit. All the greenery and the tree are to be removed. If you have the room, perhaps you can save your tree in a quiet corner of your garden. Just tuck it away there, off to the side, and next December, do what we do: use that tree to fuel your fire on the darkest night of the year that comes when the Winter Solstice returns next December. This is, I think, an honorable way to send off the tree that has brought your family so much joy this year, and continues the spiraling circle of time and seasons that gave that tree life in the first place. The tree, you, the Magi, the child, all are part of this same spiral.

Image: Three kings brought to us as gifts by our neighbors Don and Pat Cortese, Twelfth Night 2013. 

 

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