Sun Celebrations: Solstice Traditions Around The World

Today marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest day in the southern, the summer and winter solstice.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, humans have been celebrating these events for millennia and on modern-day solstice days, ancient and new traditions mix around the world.

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Some of the best-known summer solstice festivities take place in Sweden, which celebrates its famous Midsommar festivals. Gatherings include weaving wreaths from flowers, errecting a decorated pole, lighting fires and of course feasting. Midsummer traditions are also practiced in other Scandinavian as well as Baltic countries, all of whom are sun-deprived during the winter months.

Fires lit play a central role in these traditions, as they do in celebrations elsewhere in Europe, for example in Austria, where they are lit in a spectacular way across mountain ranges in the Tyrol region. The fires are also sometimes referred to as Johannisfeuer, a link to the Christian feast day of St. John. Midsummer celebrations under this banner also take place in many Spanish cities as well as in Eastern European countries and are one example among several Christian holidays which coincide with pagan traditions.

In the United Kingdom and South America, solstice traditions hark back to ancient cultures which worshipped the sun or knew how to read its path across the sky.

At Stonehenge, thousands gather at summer solstice each year to witness how the stone circle aligns with the sun’s movement. Seen from inside the Stonehenge circle, the sun rises over a further removed stone, the Heel stone, on this day once a year.

In Peru, Ecuador and Argentina, people honor old Inca traditions celebrating sun god Inti at what is in the Southern Hemisphere the shortest day of the year.

In another sun-deprived corner of the world, Alaska, the city of Fairbanks puts on a large festival on summer solstice day each year, which includes a midnight baseball game.

In Asia, indigenous Chinese peoples still practice old sun-worshipping traditions, while in Japan, new midsummer traditions include saving electricity for two hours by lighting candles at night and just relaxing.