Summer Under the Lily Moon
Latvia’s most important national holiday is arguably not Christmas but the summer solstice celebrations of Ligo (pronounced “leegwa”) – a pagan tradition when Latvians celebrate the shortest night by staying up to greet the rising sun.
Wanted to add a note from a Latvian which puts an interesting twist on this:
“Just sent you a couple of notes on your wonderful blog. Interesting you would call Summer Solstice the shortest night, when I was gorwing up, all the Latvians refered it to the longest night – meaning, they were up all night because it never got dark, as opposed to winter solstice, which technically is the longest night – then,they would light a lot of candles. So much for pagan traditions.
Oh, the reason the guy is wearing an oak wreath on his head is to celebrate St. John, whose favavorite tree was the sacred oak. The women only wore reaths made of wild flowers. Go figure.”
BTW: St. John’s Night is the night before St. John’s, the saint’s day for John the Baptist. It’s celebrated on June 24th. Before easy calculation of the exact day of the four solar holidays, a fixed date near the usual time was chosen and used as the celebration.
LIGO, LIGO or Let’s go, Let’s go – correct pronounciation is Li (long i , like in ing)go like in, Go! yea, those pagans sure loved their summer nights, drink beer, pick flowers and dance around the bondfire until the sun came up. There’s more to it than that – like Celtic Mythology. Too bad those German protestants had to come in change the whole merry tradition.
Summer is time for celebration, no matter who or where you are!
Shortest night? Sorry, it is the longest night on June 23rd in all of Scandinavia _ Latvia is just across from Finland on the Baltic Sea. Some call it the Summer Solstice. Of course, in Minnesota, it’s just another delightful summer evening.
The Latvians call it “St. John’s” night. Maybe he was born on that evening? “Religion and Mythology” are like a fine Late’ on a long summer’s eve. We need to read more.