Indulge Bakery Blog

Today is June 21st, the longest day and the shortest night of the year.  Today marks the "luckiest" day to get married, according to the Druids. They believed that today was the wedding of Heaven and Earth. The luck spreads all the way through June though, so if you are getting married, old beliefs say that it is the luckiest month to wed! 

Some fun facts about the summer solstice:

• Sol + stice derives from a combination of Latin words meaning "sun" + "to stand still." As the days lengthen, the sun rises higher and higher until it seems to stand still in the sky.
• As a major celestial event, the Summer Solstice results in the longest day and the shortest night of the year. The Northern Hemisphere celebrates in June, but the people on the Southern half of the earth have their longest summer day in December.
• Pagans called the Midsummer moon the "Honey Moon" for the mead made from fermented honey that was part of wedding ceremonies performed at the Summer Solstice.
• Ancient Pagans celebrated Midsummer with bonfires, when couples would leap through the flames, believing their crops would grow as high as the couples were able to jump.
• Midsummer was thought to be a time of magic, when evil spirits were said to appear. To thwart them, Pagans often wore protective garlands of herbs and flowers. One of the most powerful of them was a plant called 'chase-devil', which is known today as St. John's Wort and still used by modern herbalists as a mood stabilizer.
  
  

Reference: http://www.chiff.com/a/summer-solstice.htm for more information about the summer solstice!