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Edited on Mon Jun-20-11 06:16 PM by LiberalEsto
Tonight is the eve of the Summer Solstice.
Summer begins tomorrow, June 21, at 1:16 pm Eastern Daylight Time.
If I were in Estonia this week visiting my relatives, we'd be getting ready to celebrate the solstice on the evening of June 23. It's Estonia's biggest holiday. Everybody who can manage it builds a big bonfire, and families gather around to celebrate with singing, food and drink. They are fairly far north, so it doesn't get dark at night during the days before and after the Summer Solstice.
During the afternoon of June 23, people traditionally go to the sauna to cleanse and purify themselves. While sitting in the steam, they beat themselves lightly with leafy young birch branches that have been soaked in water, to bring the blood close to the surface of the skin. This helps bring out more impurities and improves general health.
They have all kinds of recipes for Summer Solstice foods and beverages, and there are numerous songbooks filled with traditional songs for the bonfire celebration. Women and girls weave daisy chains to wear around their heads.
In addition to flower wreaths for the woman, our neighboring Latvians make huge horseshoe-shaped wreaths of oak leaves for men to wear on their necks and shoulders, but I don't know if the Estonians do this. For Latvians and their southern neighbors the Lithuanians, the Summer Solstice is the feast day of their mother goddess, the goddess of the sun Saule. They stay up all night to watch the sunrise, when the sun is supposed to dance for joy. The three Baltic nations were the last people in Europe to be forcibly Christianized, and they still keep some pagan traditions.
Estonians seem to have forgotten their goddesses, except for Maa Ema, Earth Mother. But I theorize that they once may have worshiped a sun goddess too, possibly named Päeva or Päiva from the word päev (day). There is a Paivatar (Day's daughter) goddess figure in Finnish pagan tradition, the Finns being ethnically related to the Estonians. The Sami people further north in Lapland have a sun goddess named Beiwe, which is likely also related to the word päev.
In the old days, people jumped over the bonfires in a form of imitative magic. The higher they leaped, the taller their flax crop would grow. Owners of sheep and cows drove their flocks through the smoke of the fire to protect them for the next year.
May your flax grow tall, and may the Sun Goddess smile on everything you undertake in the coming year!
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