A Midsummer’s Eve Celebration

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Recipes:

• Borage Wine Punch
• Crystallized Borage Flowers
• Oranges with Rosemary
• Midsummer Potpourri 

I first saw a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream on an outdoor stage with the stars—easily imagined as sixteenth-century stars—shining on the audience and performers, and the breeze inviting all of us to become a part of the magic of Midsummer’s Eve. The fairy Titania urges us to

Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes,
Feed him with apricocks and ­dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
The honey bags steal from the humble-bees,
And, for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs,
And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes.

With that vision of a summer night and a mischievous fairy, Titania draws us into her world, in which forest inhabitants let the trees, plants, and the power of magic take over their senses and control their actions. How wonderful it would be to be a fairy, I thought, even if for one night. Thoughts began to circle in my mind of ancient people and their celebrations of Midsummer’s Eve.

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year. The ancients, knowing that the days would become shorter from then on, feared that the light might continually decrease until it was gone completely, and so on the eve of the longest day, they built huge bonfires to warm the heavens and hold the heat in the sun.

When Christianity swept Europe, midsummer celebrations in many countries were timed to correspond with the feast day of St. John the Baptist, June 24. Midsummer’s Eve became the Eve of St. John. The bonfires around which villagers gathered to sing, dance, and pray became known as St. John’s Fires. Early Christians adopted as a symbol the herb St.-John’s-wort, which is native to Europe and is in bloom at the time of the Eve of St. John. Chaplets—wreaths worn on the head—of St.-John’s-wort and other herbs such as vervain and motherwort were made for the midsummer ceremonies. An anonymous poet wrote:

Then doth the joyful feast of John
The Baptist take his turne,
When bonfires great, with lofty flame,
In everie towne doth burne;
And young men round about with mades
Do dance in everie street
With garlands wrought of Motherwort
Or else with Vervaine sweet.

So many rituals were associated with the Eve of St. John that the night couldn’t have been long enough for the ancient people to have completed all their magical escapades and symbolic ceremonies. Many of the magic rituals had to do with finding a husband or lover. In Italy, a young girl would ­gather buds of houseleek on Midsummer’s Eve and name a bud for each suitor; in the morning, the most fully opened bud bore the name of her future husband. When a girl set an orpine (sedum) plant in her window on Midsummer’s Eve, she would be able to tell from which direction her future husband would come by the way the stalk had turned by morning. In Denmark, two sprigs of St.-John’s-wort were placed between rafters of a house; if they grew together, a wedding would take place.

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