Page 85 - NT 2022 Almanac

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It can be very annoying when you have to go to bed when the sun is still up! It is particularly hard to go to sleep on the longest day of the year. Pagans traditionally do not go to bed at all on this night! They stay up to welcome the sunrise and give thanks for its power and warmth.
One famous pagan summer solstice celebration happens at Stonehenge, a circle of standing stones in Salisbury in the west of England. People meet at the stones to watch the sunrise at about 4.45 a.m. This is an act of worship and there is a lot of music and dancing.
The summer solstice is also known as Litha, which is an Anglo-Saxon word for ‘midsummer’. Bonfires were lit on the tops of hills – some places in Britain still do this. The bonfire represents the strength, light and heat of the sun. Young men used to leap over them for luck!
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850–1894)
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