Category Archives: St. John’s Day

Jun 21 2022
4 Comments
Midsummer, Solstice, St. John's Day, St. John's Eve, Summer

Think But This and All is Mended

A midsummer gift for you, and an invitation to join us on Saturday at Lake Worth’s Island Fest.

And so the wheel of the year moves forward one more notch: 5:13 AM Eastern on the 21st of June brings the Summer Solstice to the Northern Hemisphere. It is the astronomical start of summer, and, by traditional reckoning of time, midsummer, for now, after six months of increasing daylight and of the sun climbing higher and higher in the northern sky, things will seem to stand still for a day or two (this is the origin of the word solstice) and then, practically imperceptibly at first, things will shift the other way, and daylight will begin to diminish. This is the constant back and forth, the constant give and take, the constant rearrange that is the result of our planet on its tilted axis orbiting the sun: the tilt gives us our seasons, and the rhythm of our lives in tune with the natural world.

To the solstices the Church assigned great entrances into the world: To the solstice of midwinter it assigned the birth of Christ, and to the solstice of midsummer, the birth of his cousin, John the Baptist. Hence, Christmas falls just after the December solstice, and on this side of the wheel of the year, St. John’s Day falls just after the June solstice, on the 24th. And just as Christmas Eve is considered a magical time (animals speaking at midnight, animals kneeling to pray, wells running with wine), so is St. John’s Eve considered a magical time, as well. And while some people will insist that William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is set on May Eve (April 30, Walpurgis Night), I don’t think that’s quite right. I subscribe to the camp that believes the play is set on St. John’s Eve, the 23rd of June.

This is precisely why I read an adaptation of  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for a new video series from the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. It’s called Stay Awake Bedtime Stories. The episode was just released, in time for St. John’s Eve this Thursday night and St. John’s Day on Friday, but also in time for the solstice. Seth made the floral crown for me, and Haden the Convivio Shopcat is there at the start of the video (though she soon stretched and ventured off in search of a meal). The reading is my gift to you at this magical time of year. Please enjoy it by clicking here.

This is the second story I’ve read for the series, but I began Stay Awake with the idea of enlisting storytelling help from friends of mine around the globe. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is only Episode No. 4. Aside from me reading that, you can Stay Awake with me as I read “Pierre” by Maurice Sendak. But also Stay Awake with British artist Davy McGuire as he reads “That Pesky Rat” by Lauren Child, and Stay Awake with master storyteller Jonathan Kruk as he performs “The Misadventures of Ichabod Crane.” Find all four episodes here at the Stay Awake tab at jaffecollection.org. And if you follow the project on Instagram (@stayawakebedtimestories), you’ll be amongst the very first to know about new episodes, for our followers there typically learn about new broadcasts days before anyone else. (You’ll find Convivio Bookworks there, too: @conviviobookworks.)

COME SEE US!
We’ll be at Lake Worth’s inaugural Island Festival this Saturday from 3 to 9.

It’s our first pop-up market since Eastertime and I’m really excited for the stilt walkers and the Junkanoo band and the Polynesian fire dancers. Island Fest is a free event for the whole family and it’s at Hatch 1121, just west of City Hall at 1121 Lucerne Avenue here in Lake Worth (the same place where we gather each year for our local Dia de Los Muertos celebration). Hopefully the weather stays dry! We’ll be there with all our textiles (including Millie’s Tea Towels) and some of our traditional artisan goods from Mexico, some things for Midsummer from Germany and Sweden, and our Shaker herbs and teas and soaps. Click here for full details and if you come by, please say hello!

Finally, I apologize for not writing more. Things have been way too busy at work. You know I would have written if I could have for all the celebrations I’ve missed: Juneteenth, Father’s Day, Bloomsday, Pentecost… but I’ll do my best to be with you for the celebrations to come. In the meantime: Give me your hands if we be friends. Happy Midsummer to you.

 

Jun 23 2020
4 Comments
Midsummer, Solstice, St. John's Day, St. John's Eve, Summer

Olde Midsummer

A few days past the solstice, and with the setting sun tonight, we come to St. John’s Eve. You might think of it as the opposite side of the year from Christmas Eve, for indeed it is, as are the days that follow both: St. John’s Day tomorrow, Christmas Day the day after Christmas Eve. These celebrations go back to days that were already considered holy, even before Christianity. The early Church tapped into the imagery but replaced the characters. No one knows when the historical Christ was born, but the early Church decided the Midwinter solstice was perfect for emphasizing the concept of Jesus as Light of the World. They placed the birth of St. John the Baptist at the Midsummer solstice, for it is written that John was born six months prior, and also that he says of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” And so Jesus is born at the darkest time of year, as light begins to increase, and John is born at the brightest time of year, as light begins to decrease. Here are the beautiful metaphoric connexions that the early Church loved, linking the story of Christ to the natural rhythm and wheel of the year.

Traditionally, St. John’s Eve is a night to spend out in the open air. In Italy, it’s a night for bonfires, and as Covid-19 quarantines end there, perhaps this will be the case tonight. In Rome, the traditional Midsummer meal centers around snails; local belief holds that eating snails, horned as they are like devils, will protect you from Midsummer mischief of the Midsummer Night’s Dream variety. In the towns of Northern Italy, Midsummer is a time to break out the balsamic vinegar that has for years been aging and developing complexity––sometimes a hundred years or more. Local lore says that every part of the meal must have some of this nectar of the gods in it.

St. John’s Eve has a long history in popular folklore as a portal night, a night when the pathways between worlds is most permeable. It is a night to go and gather plants for their magical properties: fern seed, for example, and St. John’s Wort. The latter will protect you from evil, the former, if gathered properly, is believed to confer the power of invisibility. But not without some peril: the seeds are fiercely guarded by the fairy folk who know more of these secrets than do we (and there is that connexion to literature and A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Closer to home, Seth and I find sometimes, while we are sitting at our Midsummer fire that burns in the copper fire bowl in the back yard, the night air suddenly is infused with spice––the fragrance drifting on the breeze, emanating from the blooms of the Guyana Chestnut tree. The tree blooms only at night, and each bloom lasts just one night, an upright pod that explodes with a crack into an orb of white fireworks. There is so much magic to be found in the darkness of night, and this will be a dark one, as the moon is still new.

And all the same, the night passes and St. John’s Eve ushers in St. John’s Day on the 24th. As for St. John himself, he is sacred to Puerto Rico, Québec, and Newfoundland. He is a patron saint of beekeepers, tailors, innkeepers, and printers like me. Tradition would have us cut and fashion divining rods on his day, for hidden treasures are thought to reveal themselves on St. John’s Day. Explore lonely places, it is said, and there these treasures shall be, awaiting any lucky finder. The magic passes with the day.

Here’s another fine way to celebrate: Join me tomorrow, 3 PM Eastern, Wednesday June 24, Old Midsummer Day, live on our Facebook page for Book Arts 101: Midsummer Night’s Dream. We’ve been broadcasting live from our studios each Wednesday at 3 during quarantine, and in this week’s episode, I’ll be showing books and prints that touch on Midsummer and magic. If you can’t be there for the live broadcast, you may still watch the video later at that same Facebook page. You know I love to see you.

Image: “Midsummer Eve Bonfire” by Nikolai Astrup. Painting, 1915. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jun 23 2019
Solstice, St. John's Day, St. John's Eve, Summer

Midsummer & St. John’s Eve

Just as the Northern Hemisphere’s midwinter solstice is accompanied a few days later by Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so our midsummer solstice is accompanied a few days later by St. John’s Eve and St. John’s Day, and we find ourselves today at the polar opposite of Yuletide and Christmas. The solstices are a matter of celestial mechanics––the workings of our planet orbiting the sun on a tilted axis. That tilt of 23.5 degrees is all it takes to bring us our seasons. The tilt means that as we travel around the sun, our north/south hemispheres receive different amounts of sunlight. And at this time of year, the hemisphere that is pointed toward the sun (Northern) is in summer, the hemisphere that is pointed away (Southern) is in winter. The difference in sunlight across the planet ranges from none at the equator to the extreme at the two poles. Places like Scandinavia and Alaska and Northern Canada right now are experiencing incredibly long days, the days that earn these places nicknames like “Land of the Midnight Sun,” while Antarctica is in almost constant darkness.

Oh but let’s get back to Christmas and St. John’s Day. Historically, the Church has rarely been concerned about celebrating birthdays. The feast days of saints are all focused on when they died––their birthdate into the next world. But there are three cases where they do focus on earthly birthdays: with Mary, whose birth was placed near to the autumnal equinox (September 8, at the grape harvest), and Jesus, whose birth was placed at the midwinter solstice (“Jesus, the Light of the World” (as the song goes) comes at the darkest time of year). At the midsummer solstice, we have John the Baptist, born just as light begins to wane. “He must increase, but I must decrease,” we read in John 3:30. And so there: the beautiful metaphoric connexions that the early Church loved, linking the story of Christ to the natural rhythm and wheel of the year.

Midsummer and St. John’s Day are not much celebrated in the States, much to our loss. But in other places, St. John’s Eve is a night to spend out in the open air. In Sweden, where this night is called Juhannus, it is a night for bonfires and meals of pickled herring and new potatoes with sour cream. Further south in Italy bonfires are also part of the night, but the meals vary by region. In Rome, the Midsummer meal centers around snails; local belief holds that eating snails, horned as they are like devils, will protect you from Midsummer mischief of the Midsummer Night’s Dream variety. In the towns of Northern Italy, Midsummer is a time to break out balsamic vinegar, aged as long as a hundred years. Every part of the meal has some of this nectar of the gods in it, for the lore of the land says that this is the time of year when the must enters the grape on the vine, and it is the must that will eventually become both the wine and the balsamic vinegar––a transformative magic all its own. The must is the juice, crucial to both, for good balsamic vinegar is made from must just as is wine. It is then aged all those years in casks of various types of woods: at least a dozen years, but, as mentioned above, sometimes a hundred years or more.

St. John’s Eve has a long history in popular folklore as a portal night, a night when the pathways between worlds is most permeable. It is a night to go and gather plants for their magical properties: fern seed, for example, and St. John’s Wort. The latter will protect you from evil, the former, if gathered properly, is believed to confer the power of invisibility. But not without some peril: the seeds are fiercely guarded by the fairy folk who know more of these secrets than do we. The magical properties of plants also play into Shakespeare’s comedy. Have you ever wondered what is the “herb” (a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound) that Oberon instructs Puck to fetch and squeeze the juice of onto the eyelids of Titania and then of the lovers? Well, these are the things I wonder about. Oberon goes on to tell us that maidens call it “love-in-idleness,” but in modern terms it turns out the herb is a flower known as Viola Tricolor, also known as Heartsease or Wild Pansy. You may have some blooming now in your summer garden. So much magic, so close to home.

As for the portals on this portal night: our mostly logical 21st century minds don’t subscribe much to magic, but magic can take many forms and can mean different things to different people. If you want to think of magic in terms of calling down joy to your life, in transforming the events of each day into positivity through an open and giving attitude, well, I am all for that magic. This is a powerful alchemy, a magic we all have access to. There are places, though, where folks insist they run into magic of a more ethereal kind, still today in this logical world we live in. Those in Ireland and Britain have their faeries; the Icelanders have their Huldufólk; the Finns, who are so prominent here in Lake Worth, have their Haltijas. And of course we have Shakespeare. I happen to love A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I just can’t get enough of it. Some scholars place the action of Shakespeare’s play at May Eve, but this is not an idea with which I agree, and I firmly believe our pal Will set the play squarely in the heart of the mysteries of St. John’s Eve.

Be that as it may, the night passes and St. John’s Eve ushers in St. John’s Day on the 24th. As for St. John himself, he is sacred to Puerto Rico, Québec, and Newfoundland. He is a patron saint of beekeepers, tailors, innkeepers, and printers like me. Tradition would have us cut and fashion divining rods on his day, for hidden treasures are thought to reveal themselves on St. John’s Day. Explore lonely places, it is said, and there these treasures shall be, awaiting any lucky finder. The magic passes with the day. It is customary to eat strawberries on St. John’s Day, and in Estonia and Finland, a special St. John’s Day cheese is made, flavored with caraway seeds. Luckily no one has made a tradition of eating the foods that St. John himself is known to have eaten: “And his meat was locusts and wild honey” (Matthew 3:4). Try serving that at your next Midsummer dinner and watch your guests clear out in a hurry.

Image: The start of an early St. John’s Eve fire in the yard, June 22, looking a bit like a wheel.

 

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