Summer Solstice's Long Reach, Part 1

Monday, June 23, 2025

Summer Solstice’s Long Reach, Part 1

by CynthiaW

The summer solstice is the date each year on which one hemisphere of the earth is nearest the sun. It occurs around June 20-22 in the Northern Hemisphere and around December 20-22 in the Southern Hemisphere. In each latitude, north or south, the summer solstice is the longest day – measured from sunrise to sunset – of the year.

The Arctic and Antarctic Circles mark the point at which there is a full 24 hours of sunlight at the summer solstice. At the poles, the summer solstice is part of a season of continuous daylight. The summer sun rises at Barrow, Alaska, in early May and does not set until late July. Residents report that they are very energetic and productive during this time! At the equator, the length of the day does not change, but the sun is directly overhead at noon (in your time zone) on the solstice.

Humans have incorporated the summer and winter solstices into their beliefs and customs for thousands of years. For ancient Egyptians, the summer solstice indicated that the annual flooding of the Nile was imminent. In Greece, a festival called Kronia recognized “the turning of the year” by reversing social roles for the day, like on Boxing Day in Britain. Celebrated on December 26, Boxing Day originally emphasized contributions to the poor; it may be related to the “turning” of the winter solstice.

In Europe, Stonehenge is the most famous monument to ancient peoples’ interest in the solstice. The arrangement of the enormous standing stones allowed observers to focus on the rising and setting sun at the summer and winter solstices. Stonehenge is the best known and best-preserved stone observatory circle in England, but there were several others. Archaeology in Central Europe has recently found the remains of massive timber circles erected by the ancestors of Stonehenge’s builders many centuries before these peoples’ migration into Britain.

In Scandinavia, the summer solstice was the occasion of the Allthing, an assembly of the leadership of Norse, Swedish, or Icelandic societies to resolve disputes, plan trade or warfare, and socialize. These gatherings are regarded as early seeds of democracy in Northwestern Europe.

Not much is known about the solstice rituals of ancient peoples, but some traditional customs have been observed in historic times. In Britain and Northern Europe, lighting bonfires is common even today. The fires symbolized the peoples’ offering additional energy to the sun at its apex in order to secure warm weather for the ripening and harvest seasons. It’s almost as if we think God needs our help to keep the sun shining and the earth turning!

In the Americas, the Great Medicine Wheel in Bighorn, Wyoming, is oriented to show sunrise and sunset at the summer solstice. Similar astronomical circles, formed of boulders and smaller stones on the ground, are found elsewhere in North America, especially in Canada. This suggests that people were prompted to recognize the solstices where they were most obvious. Fires and dancing were solstice customs in these areas, just as in Northern Europe.

Of all the native peoples of the Americas, the Maya were the most sophisticated practitioners of astronomy. Many of their cities had observatories and full-time astronomer-priests. The Maya tracked not only the solstices and equinoxes, but zeniths, perihelions, transits, eclipses, and other movements of the sun, moon, and planets. Even the planning of Maya cities was based on their astronomical observations: an entire urban grid would be oriented toward the solstice sunrise or toward another city with a famous observatory.

Maya people in Mexico and Guatemala still practice some of their traditional rituals surrounding the summer solstice. In 2020, Guatemalan Maya community leader Nana Amalia discussed the spiritual meaning of the Maya’s astronomical timekeeping systems. She emphasized, “Our own existence is equally transcendental, and we can’t waste it or lose time in daily insanity. Our destiny as people in the current times is to be a guiding light. We, together with other native peoples, are sending out a call to our brothers and sisters to transform, to search for their well-being, to live in harmony.”

In Part Two, we’ll continue to search for our well-being and harmony, avoiding daily insanity.