Idlefolly's Summer Daze

Celebration of the summer solstice, near June 22, the longest day of the year, is as old as humankind. At first there apparently was fear that the sun would not come back to its full summer glory, or wouldn't come back at all as the days after the solstice began to get shorter and shorter. For this fundamental reason, bonfires and fire rites of all kinds were initiated on Midsummer's Eve, June 21 (or there about), to symbolize the sun's power and help renew the sun's energy as it began its downward course across the horizon. The holiday, in fact, is not the Midsummer Day, June 22, but the evening and night preceding it. The holiday coincides with the summer solstice. At the beginning of the 20th century it was observed all over Lithuania, now it is more popular in the northern and central parts of the country. Although St. John the Baptist occupies a very important place in the hierarchy of saints, the Church does not attach any great importance to the celebration of his nativity, which falls on the Midsummer Day. It is a festival of simple people, connected with the veneration of fire. Young girls adorn their heads with flower wreaths. A tall pole with a wooden wheel soaked in tar or filled with birch bark is hoisted at the top of the highest hill in the vicinity. Men whose names are Jonas (John) set the wheels on fire and make bonfires around it. In some places a second pole is hoisted with flowers and herbs. Young people dance round the fire, sing songs about rye, play games, men try to jump over the fire. The burning wheels on the poles are rolled down the hill into a river or a lake at its foot, men jumping over it all along. On the Midsummer Day people weed the rye and burn all the weeds.

Young people play games all through Midsummer Night until sunrise or until dew falls out, Girls float wreaths on rivers to find out their prospects for marriage. The farther their wreaths float the sooner they will get married. It is also very important which bank the wreath will stop at. Sometimes a burning candle or a bowl filled with burning tar is fixed in the middle of the wreath. A great number of Midsummer Night's superstitions and customs are similar to those observed on Christmas Eve. A girl will marry the man whom she will see in her dream walking along the straw placed across the bowl of water under her bed or who will dry his face on the towel placed beside her bed. The future husband will come from the direction in which she notices the first bonfire on Midsummer Night.

There are numerous stories about the fern, which comes into blossom in the thick of the woods on Midsummer Night. He who finds a fern blossom becomes a wise, rich and happy man. But it is not easy to find a fern blossom, for horrible monsters and witches try to scare everybody away so that they could snatch the blossom themselves. Everybody who wants to find a fern blossom must know that only nine-year-old ferns can burst into blossom, that it is necessary to spread a silk kerchief under the clump for the blossom to fall onto, to draw a circle around oneself with a rowan stick hallowed in church, light a candle and pray in defiance of the monsters around. The blossom that drops onto the kerchief looks like a speck of gold. It is best to saw it under the skin of a finger or the palm, then nobody will steel it from you.

Only a very good man can hope to find a fern blossom and it can happen only once in his lifetime, Sometimes the fern blossom drops into a poor man's bast shoe unawares and suddenly the man acquires knowledge of the hidden treasures, of the speech of animals and birds, trees and bees. But when the man comes home and takes off his shoes, the fern blossom falls out, all the man's knowledge disappears.