Midsummer/St. John's Day
June 24 is a summer festival! June 24 is the feast commemorating the birth of John the Baptist. The feast brings together images of sun, solstice, and midsummer. According to Luke's gospel, John was six months older than Jesus, so this festival is exactly six months before December 24. The nativity of John was established very early in the church's history, about the same time as Christmas.
As Christmas takes place near the winter solstice when the nights are longest (in the Northern Hemisphere), St. John's Day occurs near the summer solstice when the sun is bright and the days are the longest of the year. Summer does not seem as reflective as a cold, winter night. The air is filled with sound, heat, birds, and bugs, for example. Yet the hum of summer and the abundant, green vegetation speak of fullness and even paradise.
In many parts of the world, St. John's Day is a major holiday connected to midsummer (which doesn't mean the middle of the summer, but the days around the summer solstice). The European tradition of spending the whole night outdoors was immortalized in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Both water and fire are emblems of John: the water of baptism and the fire of the sun. On midsummer's eve, in some places around the world, St. John's fires are lit along the water or people dance around huge bonfires. In Sweden people dance around a Maypole and in some places in Germany the village green is decorated with a "Johanniskrone" a woven wreath or "crown" of twigs and leaves decorated with flowers and ribbons.
At the winter solstice we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the sun of righteousness, and at the summer solstice we celebrate another birth: John, son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. The births are told in a parallel fashion in Luke 1 and 2. In pointing the way to the Messiah, John says, "he must increase and I must decrease." The sun shines brightest at this time of year, but in the next six months it will decrease, minutes a day, until the winter solstice.
As Christopher Hill writes, "At St. John's moment of midsummer, the cross, where time and the timeless intersect, its arms going off in four directions, takes on the completeness of the circle, the fiery wheel of the summer sun." And what is John's connection to the sun? In the words of the prophecy uttered by John's father, Zechariah (and the Benedictus canticle, sung in Morning Prayer): "You, my child ... shall go before the Lord to prepare the way. In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high (the sun) will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and sit in the shadow of death."