Think about that when you are stressed!

Happy Midsummer's Eve!

Over eons of time mankind noticed that one day was the longest day of the year. Therefore, on that day they decided to celebrate. All men and women were preordained to make love and all the ones who were left over were preordained to be killed. All the leftovers of every species were rounded up to be hung if they were animals, or hanged, if they were humans, on the boughs of oak trees. The pressure to ensure that twelve of each species of animal and plant life were included must have put a terrible strain on each tribe or village, as some of them might have not been able to have so many redundant people to sacrifice.
Thus, the evening became a festival of anguish and orgies. The ones hanging on the trees were of course anguished to be slowly choking to death, while the happy people on the ground groped each other while trying to prove their prowess and prolong their climax. Finally, things died down around midnight when all the men and women and surviving animals came out for a respite and a midnight snack. And that is how a midsummer Night’s Feast was born.

Saint Jonas' Festival (Joninės, St. Jonas Day, Rasos, or Midsummer Day) is celebrated on June 23 in Lithuania. We have particularly lively traditions this evening, including dancing and jumping over fires, drinking beer and midus, or meade made from honey, playing songs until the sun sets, then floating grass wreaths on the water, singing songs, telling tales, and searching to find the magic fern blossom at midnight. Of course, for many of the younger set, this is only the beginning. In the morning, there is probably no hay loft or grassy knoll left in the country without an imprint of loves labour left behind. Su Joninem!

The Good Old Days

Ancient times come alive in Lithuania this weekend. When people can visit farms and villages all over the country and learn to bake bread the old fashioned way, brew beer and mead, learn to weave, pick mushrooms, go fishing, ride around the country side in horse-drawn carriages, sing folk songs around the camp fire, dance, and of course make love and sleep in hay lofts.