Midsummer Day Holiday

The holiday, in fact, is not the Midsummer Day, June 24, 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.
On Midsummer Day's morning witches acquire special powers, they drag towels over the dewy grass to affect cows' milk. To save their cows from the witches' magic farmers shut them in cowsheds for the Midsummer Night and stick bunches of nettle in the door to scare the witches away. On Midsummer Day cows are driven out to pasture in the early after- noon when there is no more dew on the grass. Horses, however, are left to graze in the...

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