Stretch into the Sun
Celebrating the Summer Solstice
|by Molly Westerman
Hot afternoons, wild thunderstorms, and
nights filled with fireflies! The summer solstice, or midsummer, is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and learn about the warmest
season with our families.
• light, heat, fire, and sun
• the earth in full bloom: flowers and
greenery
• life in full bloom: joy, pleasure, creativity,
and stretching into the long day
At the Peak of the Light
This is the time of Midsummer Day, St. John’s
Day, Litha, and the Midnight Sun Festival (including Nome, Alaska’s icy Polar Bear Swim!).
In some historical and cultural locations, the
summer solstice has also been a magically
potent day—and especially night—when
healing herbs should be gathered and when
witches and fairies are abroad. It is a lovely
time to read, perform, or see Shakespeare’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream with older children and to enjoy tales of summer magic with
people of all ages.
The word “solstice” brings together two Latin
words: sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). At
the winter and summer solstices, the sun as
seen from Earth appears to pause in its seasonal motion and then reverse its path.
The summer solstice is the day of the year
when the sun seems to rise highest in the sky,
following its longest and tallest arc, and rises
and sets at its northernmost point on the horizon. This is also the longest day and shortest
night of the year, with the difference in daytime hours more noticeable at high latitudes—
closer to the north or south pole, farther from
the equator. In the northern hemisphere, our
summer solstice occurs around 21 June each
year. (In the southern hemisphere, this date
marks the winter solstice; 21 December is
their summer and our winter solstice.)
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Summer festivals and personal
observances of the solstice often
reflect the following themes:
Celebrating with children
How tall is my shadow?
At noon on each solstice day, measure
from your child’s toe to his or her shadow’s
top. Have the child measure your shadow,
too, and record the numbers. After gathering data on all four holidays, you can
ask your child to guess which shadow was
longest, compare your shadows’ changing
heights with your own heights (when did it
come up to your knee? when was it about