Midsummer festival is the biggest festival for the people living in the ‘land of the midnight sun’. The word ‘midsummer’ brings nothing but joy to the people living in these areas. It is a national holiday in some countries at midsummer. People are going to enjoy this day with a feast, bonfire, dancing. Midsummer 2024 is not going to be any different as well.
Midsummer Eve
The key component of a midsummer celebration is the maypole, also known as the mustang. It is a flower-adorned green pole. People celebrate the Midsummer Day dancing around the pole. In the Midsummer Eve, this pole is hoisted and before that, it is embellished with leaves and fresh-picked flowers. Midsummer Eve is always celebrated on a Friday. In Sweden, the midsummer 2024 eve will be on the 26th of June. In Germany, the midsummer 2024 eve will be on the 24th of June.
What is Midsummer?
Midsummer is the celebration of the longest day and the shortest night in summer solstice in the northern countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and other eastern European countries. It is to celebrate the lush summer when nature is full of color and fertility.
Midsummer 2024 Date
Midsummer 2024 is celebrated between the 19th of June and the 25th of June depending on the country. As it is the occasion of the summer solstice, this day is a national holiday in many countries. It is usually celebrated on a Friday.
Midsummer Festival
Midsummer festival is a 500-year-old celebration of the sunny and cheerful summer day. On this day, northern people have a feast with their whole community. They dance and sing around the maypole. Drink vodka and eat traditionally pickled herring with potato, dill, and chives. They also enjoy the Midsummer Eve by a bonfire.
Midsummer 2024 in Germany
Midsummer’s Day 2024 in Germany on Thursday , June 24. Everything You Should Know About the Longest Day of the Year. In 2024, the June solstice occurs on Sunday, June 20, marking the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Sweden Midsummer 2024
Midsummer 2024 in Sweden is celebrated on the weekend of June 20th to 26th. In Dalarna and Gothenburg, the Midsummer Eve was on the 19th of June. Traditional midsummer is celebrated in the summerhouse (‘landställe’) of the locals which is decorated with fresh flowers.
Midsummer Finland
Midsummer’s Day 2024 in Finland Celebrated on June 26. In Finland, the midsummer celebration is called the ‘Juhannus’. This is the celebration of Ukko, the Pagan God of thunder. Finnish enjoys this day with bonfires and sauna. This day is a national holiday.
Take On a Tradition
For ancient pagan Celtic peoples, who inhabited the British Isles, and modern Scandinavians, who experience almost continuous sunlight at this time of year (think “Land of the Midnight Sun”), the summer solstice is a magical time, one of new beginnings celebrated with bonfires, food, dancing, and festivals.
In agricultural communities, fine weather on Midsummer Day portends a fruitful season. This year, start summer or mark its midpoint by adopting, or adapting, one or more of these practices.
- In Sweden, Midsommar is a national holiday, second only to Christmas. All Swedes take to the countryside and make their own Midsummer flower garland. This is then followed by a lunch of pickled herring with potatoes, dill and chives, drinking nubbe (vodka snaps), and dancing around a tall pole adored with fresh-picked flowers.
- In Greece, locals re-enact a 2,500-year solstice tradition: They hike to the peak of Mt. Olympus, with an elevation of 9,573 feet. Take a walk!
- In Latvia, folks feast on bacon pie and sweet beer, and, in the dark hours of the short night, search for a fern flower believed to be a lucky charm for lovers. Choose your lucky charm and organize a search party.
- In Britain, folks surround the ancient Stonehenge monument and dance and play drums to mark the Sun’s solstice peek—and peaking appearance—between slivers of rock. Stop whatever you’re doing while the Sun pauses overhead.
- In Kraków, Poland, girls make flower-and-herb wreaths and float them down the Wisla River. If a boy takes up a girl’s garland, the belief is that they will marry. (If the wreath sinks, it is believed that the girl will die young!) Wreaths that connect while afloat symbolize two girls’ lifelong friendship. Fashion a flower or vine wreath.
- Italy has regional midsummer traditions: In Rome, people eat snails. It is believed that these horned creatures will protect the consumer from devilry. In northern Italy, cooks prepare dishes with aged balsamic vinegar; this is the time when the year’s grapes are entering a critical stage of development. Sprinkle balsamic vinegar on a salad.
- On Midsummer’s Eve, Danes dine with family and friends, then celebrate with bonfires into which they throw effigies of witches made of hay. Light a candle.
Happy Midsummer 2024 Quotes
“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.”
“Each solstice is a domain of experience unto itself. At the summer solstice, all is green and growing, potential coming into being, the miracle of manifestation painted large on the canvas of awareness.”
“I am summer, come to lure you away from your computer… come dance on my fresh grass, dig your toes into my beaches.”
“Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.”
“Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a light bulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing.”
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
“Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.”
Final Thought
For all northern citizens, this ‘midsummer’ day has a special meaning. They wait for this day all year long. Even the pandemic of COVID-19 could not hamper the celebration of midsummer 2024. People celebrated their 500-year-old tradition online and did a DIY midsummer this time to toast this joyful day.
