Midsummer and Litha

The story behind the day

Midsummer, or Litha, is the festival of the summer solstice, kept around 20 to 24 June. In Europe the old midsummer fires were kept on the eve of the feast of St John the Baptist; they are recorded in Sweden from 1555 and in Ireland from the eighteenth century. Modern Heathens, Wiccans and Druids keep the solstice as one of their eight festivals. Evidence that the pre-Christian Germanic peoples kept a Midsummer festival is thin, and the modern Pagan Midsummer is a twentieth-century construction.^[1–8]

Origins

The evidence for a pre-Christian Midsummer is thin. The Troth, a Heathen organisation, says the sagas give little sign of Midsummer being kept in Scandinavia or England before or during the conversion, and the Nordic Museum in Stockholm cannot say whether it was kept before Sweden became Christian. The oldest sources are Christian: Olaus Magnus, writing in 1555, describes dancers of every age around many bonfires on St John the Baptist's eve. Wiccans call the festival Litha, a word that Bede records as the Old English name for both June and July.^{[2–3, 9]}

What it marks

Midsummer marks the sun at its height. Modern Pagans honour the day as the longest of the year: Wiccans say the sabbat celebrates the height of the sun's power, Druids call the dawn of the solstice the time of the sun's most powerful day, and the Asatru Alliance identifies the sun with the brightness of Baldur.^[6]

How it came to be

In Ireland the St John's Eve bonfire was a long-lived custom. Writing in 1718, John Toland reported midsummer eve fires still kept by the Catholics of Ireland, and in 1752 the traveller Richard Pococke noted bonfires all over the country on Midsummer Eve, explained to him as lights for the eve of St John the Baptist. The scholar Kay Muhr records that the practice continued widely in Ulster in the nineteenth century, though the Ordnance Survey memoirs note it being gradually abandoned in parts of the north-east.^[4]

How it is kept

sunrise at Stonehenge with the crowd — Sunrise at Stonehenge with the crowdIllustration · AI-generated

Heathen groups keep Midsummer at the solstice; the Asatru Alliance holds a High Feast called Midyear, the Feast of Baldr, and the Asatru Folk Assembly lists Miðsumar on 21 June. Wiccans call the solstice Litha, and Druids mark Alban Hefin, which many people know through the celebrations at Stonehenge. In the Southern Hemisphere, Pagans reverse the dates.^{[5, 7, 9–10]}

Across traditions

The Irish and Swedish fires are Christian-era folk customs on St John's Eve, while the Heathen and Wiccan festivals are modern. The cycle of eight Pagan festivals dates only from the mid twentieth century, when Gerald Gardner is said to have adapted eight older festivals into the sabbats of Wicca. The Troth gives the solstice as falling between 20 and 24 June.^{[1, 8]}

Sources

Each statement above was checked against published sources; the verdict says whether it stood as written, was corrected or was hedged.