Summer Solstice Celebrations in Ancient Greece
Temple of Poseidon, Cape Sounion. Athens, Greece.
The summer solstice, the longest day of the year, officially marks the beginning of summer.
In the ancient Greek Attic, or Athens calendar, the New Year began with the appearance of the first full moon after the summer solstice (There was no single Greek calendar, almost every ancient Greek community had a calendar of its own).
June’s full moon, known as the strawberry moon, was named for its appearance during the strawberry picking season. Here, the strawberry moon rises above the Apollo Temple in ancient Corinth, on June 17, 2019 – Photo by Valerie Gache – AFP Via Getty Images
The summer solstice also fell exactly one month before the Olympic Games, one of the most important events in ancient Greece, would be opened.
In the northern hemisphere, every year on the 20th of June (or 21st), the summer solstice is the moment when the North Pole leans closest to the sun, which is at the highest point of the sky.
This year (2024) the summer solstice falls on Thursday, June 20th at 11:50 PM Eastern European Time
The Kronia:
The Ancient Greek Festival in Celebration of the Summer Solstice
Cronos and his wife Rhea by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. 1850.
In ancient Greece, to celebrate the summer solstice, the Kronia festival was held in honor of Kronos (Cronus), King of the Titanes, god of agriculture and father of Zeus.
Kronos controlled the cycle of seasons and the growth of crops and represented the harvest, an age of prosperity.
The festival of Kronia in was unique in that it deviated from the ancient Greek rigid social hierarchy.
Slaves and masters celebrated together, sometimes even reversing roles, in order to mirror Kronos’ “Golden Age” of equality and peace.
Persephone Returns to Earth
The Return of Persephone – Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) – Leeds Art Gallery – England.
During the festival the Ancient Greeks also celebrated the return to Earth of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, goddess of harvest and agriculture, a time when the land was reborn and bloomed.
Persephone had been kidnapped by Hades, who fell in love with her at first sight and carried her off to his kingdom; the Underworld.
She was destined to live six months (the winter months) underground and six months (the summer months) on Earth.
Dionysus:
God of Wine and Liberator of Human Souls
Dedication to Bacchus (Dionysus) – 1889 – By Sir lawrence Alma Tadema – The Hamburger Kunsthalle Art Museum – Hamburg – Germany.
Throughout the Kronia celebrations the ancient Greeks would raise their glasses to Dionysus, the god of wine, also considered as the liberator of human souls.
They believed the after effects they experienced from drinking wine were a god inside them, freeing and liberating them from their inhibitions.
Therefore Dionysus was the great liberator.
The magical Fires of Klidonas or Fires of the Heliotrope:
Saint John’s Eve
Saint John’s Fire with festivities in front of a Christian Calvary shrine in Brittany, 1893 – Le Petit Journal 1-07-1893.
In ancient times, the celebrations of St. John Klidonas, or St John Heliotropos, as he was called in some areas, was held the night before June 21st.
These celebrations, now known as Midsummer’s Eve & St. John’s Eve, are often considered separate; however both are today held on June 24th.
In ancient Greece “fires of fortune” were lit, usually at crossroads, the night before the Solstice, which people would jump over one by one or in pairs.
Klidonas Custom – Naxos island – Greece.
The leap over the flames was a sort of a cleansing by fire ritual where people were freed from all evil in order to enter the New Year with a clean slate.
They also made wishes as they leapt over the flames; New Year resolutions if you will.
All the waste and rubbish of the previous year would be thrown into the fire, including the the May Wreath, which was the first to thing to hit the flames.
This burning symbolized renewal and regeneration.
The Klidonas Divination Ritual for Love and Marriage
Two Women of Ancient Greece Filling Their Water Jugs at a Fountain (women of Corinth) – Painting by Henry Ryland – 1898
“Klidonas” comes from the ancient Greek word “κλήδων” (klidon), meaning “the predictor sound” and was used to describe the combination of random and incoherent words during a divination ceremony.
To conduct the divination ritual Village girls gather together and one of them goes to the well to bring the “silent water” or ‘speechless water”, so called as she must not utter a word to anyone on her way to and from the well.
Once the water is brought, each girl then throws in a personal object, as a charm, called “rizikari” (from the word “riziko” meaning destiny).
The pot is then covered with a cloth whilst prayers are offered to Saint John and then placed in an open space overnight.
Next morning, the girl who brought the water must take it inside, before the first light of day.
In the afternoon an older lady recites a spur of the moment short poem each time a girl chooses a charm.
These spontaneous poems are believed to reveal the future husband of the unknown girl who happens to own the charm.
“Summer Solstice”
A Poem by Giorgos Seferis
George Seferis – Greek diplomat and poet – The first Greek to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature – 1963.
Summer Solstice I
On one side the sun at its grandest,
on the other the new moon,
distant in memory like those breasts.
Between them the chasm of a night full of stars,
life’s deluge.
The horses on the threshing-floors
gallop and sweat
over scattered bodies.
Everything finds its way there,
and this woman
whom you saw when she was beautiful, suddenly
sags, gives way, kneels.
The millstones grind up everything
and everything turns into stars.
Eve of the longest day.
(Translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sheppard)
