Midsummer Day
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Posted by Stephen Pusey on June 20, 1996 at 18:54:24:
The sultry humid pall over New York City is a real witches brew this Solstice Eve. People are getting nervous, paranoid and befuddled as Puck smirks in anticipation of the mischief he will enjoy on Midsummer day - which, incidentally, is not the 21st but the 24th of June. Midsummer's Day seems to have been a tradition throughout Europe, but not observed much any more. Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer's Night's Dream', is, of course, a celebration of the creative mischief of the Magic folk on this day and their delight in the fever of anxious confusion and emotional turmoil they can instill in mere mortals.
Midsummer day is also St.John's day. This is also the high festival of the Masons and supposedly, was also celebrated by Druids. For a few days from the summer solstice the meridional altitude of the sun, or its height at high noon, appears for some days to be the same. The astronomical longest day, like the shortest day, is not every year, on account of leap year, or on the same numerical day, and therefore the 24th of June is always taken for Midsummer-day. Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin, and this is the case with respect to a custom still practiced in Ireland, where the Druids flourished at the time they flourished in Britain. On the eve of Saint John's day, that is, on the eve of Midsummer-day, the Irish light fires on the tops of the hills. This is an emblematical reference to the sun, which on that day is at his highest summer elevation, and might in common language be said to have arrived at the top of the hill.
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