Archive for June, 2011

Want a genuine midsummer celebration?

Go to Lithuania’s pagan capital Kernavė!

Kernavė is a unique five mounds complex, honoured as being the first capital of Lithuania almost a 1000 years ago. The first settlers appeared here as early as in 9th-8th millennium BC, in the Epipaleolithic period. Since then until the very Early Middle Ages, the territory was continuously settled by people who left their traces. In written sources Kernavė was first mentioned in 1279 in the Livonian Chronicle and the Herman Vartberg Chronicle, where it was described as Grand Duke Traidenis’, the Great Duke’s of Lithuania, estate (1269-1282). At that time Kernavė was the most significant economic-political centre of Lithuania. In 1390 Kernavė was burnt in an attack by Crusaders. After the fire the wooden town and castles was never rebuilt, and the remaining residents moved to the top of the hill instead of staying in the valley.

In later years, the remains of the city were covered with an alluvial earth layer, that formed wet peat. It preserved most of the relics intact, and it is a treasure trove for archaeologists, leading some to call Kernavė the "Troy of Lithuania". For example, Kernavė has the oldest known medgrinda, a secret underwater road paved with wood. The road was used for defense and dates from the 4–7th centuries.

Kernavė is world known for its annual celebration of Joninės – Lithuania’s famous midsummer festival dating back to the pagan times, and since 1967 also for its traditional Rasa festival. For several decades this festival was not only a way to clean the soul, but also to protest against the humiliation of national consciousness and the forced implantation of Soviet traditions. Attempts to prohibit this festival were not successful.

Kernavė is famous for national celebrations of King Mindaugas (1200-1263) coronation day on 6 July. On that day a festival is held, where medieval authentic crafts, war games and folk music are presented. The craftsmen come from around the Baltics and neighboring countries.

SU JONINĖM!

Happy Midsummer!

How to Celebrate a Lithuanian Midsummer

Midsummer Day in Lithuania is a celebration of the Summer Solstice as well as being a holy day sacred to St. John. The real festivities take place on the evening, prior to the date itself, which is 24th of June. That night, throughout Lithuania, people come together to celebrate Saint Jonas' Festival, also known as Jonines, Kupolines or Rasos.

Things you'll need: • Outdoor party place • Fresh flowers and herbs • Floral garlands for unmarried females • Fire pit or candles • Lithuanian music • Book of Lithuanian folktales • Lithuanian foods and beverages • Silk handkerchief • Access to flowing water (if possible)

Step 1
Select an outdoor place in which to hold your party. Decorate your party space with fresh flowers and, if possible, raise a pole covered with flowers and herbs. Make garlands of fresh flowers and ribbons to be worn by all of the young girls and unmarried women present.

Step 2
Build a bonfire if at all possible. Lithuanian tradition calls for a tall pole crowned with a wooden wheel that has been soaked in tar or filled with birch bark, but you may have to make do with a small fire built in a fire pit or even candles. Whichever form of fire you use, if there is a member of your party named John, Jonas, or another similar name, that person should be the one to light it.

Step 3
Play Lithuanian music and encourage guests to sing Lithuanian songs if they know any. Lithuanian folk dances are also traditional, but if you do not know any of the old songs or dances you can still get a book of Lithuanian folk or fairy tales and reads some of them out loud to set the mood.

Step 4
Set out a feast consisting of traditional Lithuanian foods. Kugelis, the baked potato pudding that is the Lithuanian national dish, is pretty much de rigeur, and your guests may also enjoy such dishes as Skilandis (a smoked sausage-type meat), Salti barsciai (a cold soup made from beets), Cepelinai (potato dumplings with a ground meat filling), Vedarai (potato sausage) and Bulviniai Blynai (a type of potato pancake). Poppy seed cakes (Pyragas Su Aguonomis) and honey cakes (Meduoliai) make for an enjoyable, traditional dessert.

Step 5
Look for Lithuanian beers such as Utenos, Svyturys and Kalnapilis, Lithuanian Stumbras vodka, and Anyksciu Vynas wine. If you're the do-it-yourself type, you might like to try brewing up a batch of Lithuanian honey mead (Midus) or even Gira (also known as Kvass), which is made from fermenting this and that, usually bread, but sometimes other items such as barley, cranberries or caraway seeds. Caraway seeds can also be used to brew up a tea for non-drinkers, as can linden blossoms should you be able to acquire any.

Step 6
Take part in special Lithuanian Midsummer traditions like hunting for the magic fern blossom at midnight. This fern blossom, which should be gathered up in a silk handkerchief, is said to make the bearer wise, rich and happy, but is nearly impossible to find as it is guarded by monsters and witches. Another Midsummer game involves having unmarried girls and women float their flower garlands downstream (should you have access to a suitable body of water) to determine the length of time until they get married--the farther their garlands float, the sooner they will marry, supposedly. Yet another custom involves jumping over the bonfire and if the festivities go on all night long, revelers should be sure to wash their faces in the morning dew as they find their way home.

Read more: How to Celebrate a Lithuanian Midsummer | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_4443202_celebrate-lithuanian-midsummer.html#ixzz0rZrzzi9x

Lithuanian Midsummer

The holiday, in fact, is not the Midsummer Day, June 24, but the evening and night preceding it. The holiday coincides with the summer solstice. At the beginning of the 20th century it was observed all over Lithuania, now it is more popular in the northern and central parts of the country. Although St. John the Baptist occupies a very important place in the hierarchy of saints, the Church does not attach any great importance to the celebration of his nativity, which falls on the Midsummer Day. It is a festival of simple people, connected with the veneration of fire. Young girls adorn their heads with flower wreaths. A tall pole with a wooden wheel soaked in tar or filled with birch bark is hoisted at the top of the highest hill in the vicinity. Men whose names are Jonas (John) set the wheels on fire and make bonfires around it. In some places a second pole is hoisted with flowers and herbs. Young people dance round the fire, sing songs about rye, play games, men try to jump over the fire. The burning wheels on the poles are rolled down the hill into a river or a lake at its foot, men jumping over it all along. On the Midsummer Day people weed the rye and burn all the weeds.

On Midsummer Day's morning witches acquire special powers, they drag towels over the dewy grass to affect cows' milk. To save their cows from the witches' magic farmers shut them in cowsheds for the Midsummer Night and stick bunches of nettle in the door to scare the witches away. On Midsummer Day cows are driven out to pasture in the early after- noon when there is no more dew on the grass. Horses, however, are left to graze in the open throughout the night, or the witches magic has no effect on them.

On Midsummer Day dew has special healing powers. Young girls wash their faces in it to make themselves beautiful, older people do the same to make themselves younger. It is good to walk barefoot in dew on Midsummer Day's morning, for it saves the skin from getting chapped.
Midsummer Day and the time immediately preceding it is believed to have special powers. Medicinal herbs collected from June 1 to the Midsummer Day can cure 12 (some say 99) diseases. There are girls who save their Midsummer Day's wreaths all the year round. Great importance is attached to the Midsummer Day's fire. Its embers are brought home to make the hearth fire, and its ashes are spread in the fields.

There are numerous stories about the fern, which comes into blossom in the thick of the woods on Midsummer Night. He who finds a fern blossom becomes a wise, rich and happy man. But it is not easy to find a fern blossom, for horrible monsters and witches try to scare everybody away so that they could snatch the blossom themselves. Everybody who wants to find a fern blossom must know that only nine-year-old ferns can burst into blossom, that it is necessary to spread a silk kerchief under the clump for the blossom to fall onto, to draw a circle around oneself with a rowan stick hallowed in church, light a candle and pray in defiance of the monsters around. The blossom that drops onto the kerchief looks like a speck of gold. It is best to saw it under the skin of a finger or the palm, then nobody will steel it from you.

Only a very good man can hope to find a fern blossom and it can happen only once in his lifetime, Sometimes the fern blossom drops into a poor man's bast shoe unawares and suddenly the man acquires knowledge of the hidden treasures, of the speech of animals and birds, trees and bees. But when the man comes home and takes off his shoes, the fern blossom falls out, all the man's knowledge disappears.
Young people play games all through Midsummer Night until sunrise or until dew falls out, Girls float wreaths on rivers to find out their prospects for marriage. The farther their wreaths float the sooner they will get married. It is also very important which bank the wreath will stop at. Sometimes a burning candle or a bowl filled with burning tar is fixed in the middle of the wreath. A great number of Midsummer Night's superstitions and customs are similar to those observed on Christmas Eve. A girl will marry the man whom she will see in her dream walking along the straw placed across the bowl of water under her bed or who will dry his face on the towel placed beside her bed. The future husband will come from the direction in which she notices the first bonfire on Midsummer Night.

On the eve of Midsummer Night people adorn the wayside shrines which contain figurines of St. John. They also honour all Johns they know. This they do in various ways, for example, by fixing a wreath of oak leaves around his door. This is usually done in secret and the man thus honoured must guess whose job it was (or catch him doing it) and give him a treat.

The research done by the author of the present book in the past five years has convinced him that the customs of Christmas Eve and Midsummer Night, which coincide with the winter and summer soltices, are very closely connected. Sometimes the Christmas Eve table is covered exclusively with the hay mown just before Midsummer Night. Superstitions and customs of the two feasts are very similar. Christmas Eve customs are dominated by darkness, veneration of death and the dead, expectation, feeding of birds in a cart wheel, running round the house with a bowl of pudding, walking round the orchard. Those are all symbols of time. The summer soltice - Midsummer Night - is dominated by symbols of the sun, such as burning cart wheels hoisted high on poles which are adorned with wreaths of herbs and flowers, symbols of growth. In honour of the sun the fire from the bonfires is brought home to light the hearth, the fields are sprinkled with ash. Later these customs blended with those of Easter. The lighting of bonfires is the privilege of men who are called John. Sometimes it is the privilege of the oldest of all Johns in the vicinity. Those and other details in the celebration Of Midsummer Night testify that in the pre-Christian period Midsummer Night was celebrated as a feast of the sun.