Someone emailed me a question the other day:
"I'm trying to find out the date of the next witches meeting, is it on the longest day/shortest night and is it the 24th/25th June this year?"Witches' summer festival takes place on 20/21st of June, which is the date of the Summer Solstice - or the longest day - each year. Wiccan witches call this festival Litha, which means summer in Saxon.It is one of their eight solar holidays in the Wheel of the Year - others being the equinixes, when night and day are equal length; Imbolc, or the start of spring; Beltane, or May Day; Lughnasadh, or the harvest; Samhain, or Halloween; and Yule, or midwinter.
Litha is a festival to mark the marriage of the God and Goddess and is also a popular day for handfastings - pagan weddings, in which the couple to be married are symbolically joined by a chord around their hands.
However, for hundreds of years most people in Europe have celebrated midsummer on June 24, the Christian Feast of John the Baptist. This is only a few days after the solstice and just before the days start to become noticeably shorter.
According to Ronald Hutton's well-regarded book Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain
Origin: http://way-of-witch.blogspot.com
