Midsummer Musings

Midsummer is a misnomer. The Anglo-Saxons called it “midsumor.” They apparently stole the term “midsommar” from the Swedes (who may have themselves stolen it from the Germans). Unlike what your instinct tells you, it’s not really about the middle of the summer. It’s about the summer solstice. That would be the beginning of summer.

But don’t blame the Old English. The blame goes to the Romans, who, to be fair, once ruled the province of Britannia. In the strictest chronological terms, this would fall under the category of “Older than Old England.” Julius Caesar first invaded the island in 55 BC. About a century later, in 43 AD, Emperor Claudius formally conquered it. Rome would hold the land that would become Great Britain for nearly four hundred years.

A lot of things can happen in four centuries. For one thing, the conquered can assimilate the customs of the conquerors. The Romans were just as likely to adopt the customs of those they conquered. Call it a compromise of sorts.

It appears the festival of midsummer either was—or wasn’t—an example of this blending of traditions. With or without Roman influence, there seems to be some confusion among scholars as to what exactly midsummer festivals comprised. Sandra Billington, a folklore researcher, proposed a decade ago that the idealized portrayals of pagan midsummer celebrations might not be accurate. She suggested they were often entangled with sun-worship activities.¹

Remember that point. It’s not the rabbit hole it appears to be.

The Romans, however, did celebrate a midsummer festival. It was for the goddess Fors Fortuna (a.k.a., “Fortune”). At least it started roughly about the date of the summer solstice. For some reason, Romans considered the summer solstice to be midsummer. Nonetheless, the practice of the midsummer festival spread.

Eventually, the Catholic Church did a jiu-jitsu on the Romans and began adopting their (now classified as pagan) holidays into Church holidays. Midsummer thus became “St. John’s Day,” marking the birth of St. John the Baptist. (For those keeping score at home, he’s the guy who baptized Jesus and whose head was cut off on a lark to please the king’s stepdaughter). It is among the highest-ranking liturgical feasts in the Catholic Church. It’s also one of the oldest festivals, dating back no later than 506 AD. It remains a significant holiday in other Christian denominations.

Here’s the odd thing about celebrating Saint John’s Day (or, more precisely, St. John’s Eve): it involves lighting bonfires. Lots of bonfires.

Which, ironically, is what the sun-worshipers did. Not the Romans, though. While details are scant in ancient writings, the joyful community-centered festival of Fors Fortuna involved boating, offering trinkets to her temple, and heavy drinking. It wasn’t quite a full-fledged Bacchanalia, but Ovid was quite blunt when he wrote in Book VI of Fasti:

Come, Quirites, celebrate with joy the goddess Fors! On Tiber’s bank she has her royal foundations. Speed some of you on foot, and some in the swift boat, and think no shame to return tipsy home from your ramble. Ye flower-crowned skiffs, bear bands of youthful revellers, and let them quaff deep draughts of wine on the bosom of the stream.”²

I particularly like the use of the word “tipsy,” which I found in nearly all the translations. Certainly, no compromising there.

Nothing in Ovid hints at sun-worshiping or sun worshipers. Although you shouldn’t be surprised if these young party-goers didn’t catch a few rays whilst traversing the Tiber.

Ancient celebrations often reveal how every generation reinterprets the same symbols to suit its own needs.

Speaking of sun-worshiping and compromise, a thought struck me the other day. There are a lot of people who don’t want to see our environment polluted by the likes of acres and acres of solar farms. Similarly, there are a lot of people who think solar farms are the cat’s pajamas—the future of clean energy.

Along the same lines, many people find themselves inspired to explore all generative AI has to offer (and it does, while, at the same time, it doesn’t, but more on that in another column). Still others seem to believe it’s a drain on our energy resources. To this end, our Governor has sided with the latter and announced a moratorium on the creation of data centers in the State.

In the spirit of compromise, maybe the sun worshipers and the AI revelers—if you’ll pardon Ovid’s phrase—can find peace in compromise.

Perhaps every data center that’s built should have a solar farm on its roof. They are pretty big, after all.

And maybe we can require every solar farm to have a data center built beneath those black panels. Now that would make a really big data center. If data centers are better when they’re bigger, putting one under every solar farm ought to make everybody happy.

How’s that for midsummer musings?

Because you’ve made it this far, I give you a bonus musing. When exactly is midsummer? It makes no sense to think like the Romans and claim “mid” summer occurs on the first day of summer (i.e., the summer solstice). Nor does it make sense that midsummer is July 15^th (i.e., the ides of July and the preferred midsummer date of many).

If we were to look at the calendar, summer starts the third week of June and ends the third week of September. That makes midsummer fall somewhere between the first and second week of August.

Then again, perhaps the real midpoint of summer isn’t measured by the calendar at all, but by when we finally begin wondering where it went.

Now, that’s real musing!

¹ Billington, Sandra. “The Midsummer Solstice As It Was, Or Was Not, Observed in Pagan Germany, Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England.” Folklore, vol. 119, no. 1, 2008, pp. 41–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30035459. Accessed 19 July 2026.
² Ovid, Fasti, Book VI, § 6.771  VIII. KAL. 24^th https://topostext.org/work/143. Accessed 19 July 2026.