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.
