Yesterday, June 21st, is known as the Summer Solstice otherwise known as “the longest day of the year”. This officially marks the beginning of summer. Now, I do not think that the beginning of summer was able to sneak up on any of us, with temperatures last week with highs of 99 degrees essentially every day. But, we’re here, and the sun didn’t go down till what felt like midnight last night.
The holiday of Summer Solstice has been around for thousands of years. Civilizations like the ancient Mesopotamians, Celtic Druids, and Egyptians all celebrated this day in wild manners. Let’s get into some of the history of this ancient holiday:
- The technical description of the Summer Solstice is when the sun is at its furthest point away from the equator
- The oldest known celebration of the summer solstice was in Ancient Egypt.The Egyptians arranged their most famous monuments, the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, to display the sun set during the solstice
- The Egyptians worshiped the Summer Solstice, because it signified the annual flooding of the Nile, which was significant to their food supply
- The Mayans also were known to arrange their architecture around the solstice sunset for similar reasons to the Egyptians
- Ancient Romans celebrated the beginning of the summer with a festival in honor of their goddess, Vesta, goddess of the hearth. Women would enter temples named after Vesta and leave different offerings in hopes of good fortune
- Ancient Greece used the summer solstice to mark a new year and would hold a festival in honor of their god of agriculture, Cronus
- Some rituals for the Summer Solstice were even observed by Native American tribes. The Sioux would celebrate with a sun dance every year in front of an arrangement of stones, forming a medicine wheel, that is in line with the rising sun on the day of the Summer Solstice. This wheel is still up today in Lovell, Wyoming