Questioning Midsummer.

It having been the summer solstice yesterday, I lit a small fire outside in the garden as I do every year. In my case, however, it isn’t really the solstice I celebrate, but an acknowledgement of the fact that midsummer’s day is the feast day of the Irish goddess Aine (pronounced Anya in case you didn’t know. Aine is close to my heart, you see, for those who’ve never read my novel.)

But people do celebrate the summer solstice for its own sake, don’t they? They gather on the east coast of England and at Stonehenge every year come hell or high water and I sometimes wonder why. The summer solstice is the day on which the sun starts lowering in the sky and the days start growing shorter, so what is there to celebrate? It isn’t even a seasonal marker like Beltane and the other three.

I expect I’m missing something here. Maybe people think it appropriate to celebrate cycles. Is that it? I expect it probably is.