8 Ways to Celebrate the Summer Solstice
Girl wearing a wildflower crown.
Why is June 20 or 21 the longest day (and shortest night) of the year? It’s when the sun reaches its highest point. Share summer solstice facts with your kids (from a homeschooling mom’s blog). Here’s a short video on the difference between a solstice and an equinox. Here are more solstice facts for kids. Learn about how the solstice was celebrated in history.
Enjoy summer solstice activities including how to make a daisy chain and a homemade kite.
Make your own sun dial, using a paper plate, chopstick or pencil in the center (secured with glue or clay), and markers or pencils to mark the hours 1 through 12 around the end of the plate. Set the plate and stick outside in full sunlight, and mark lines along the shadow every hour to find out where the numbers should be placed.
“Midsummer” refers to the summer solstice, and the night before is called Midsummer Eve. Watch a film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or read the play out loud.
Enjoy a meal with a menu inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, perhaps eaten outside in a garden or local park. Here’s my imagined menu:
Donkey Ear Appetizer: endive leaves with dip or salsa of choice
4-Ingredient Athenian Lovers’ Salad: choose 4 salad ingredients such as romaine, tomatoes, peppers and feta
Fairy Hair Pasta (use angel hair or vermicelli noodles) with sauce or topping of your choice
Enchanted Forest Brownies with hidden ingredients (nuts, dried fruits, coconut— go wild)
Light candles as the sun sets, stay up late and listen to the Mendelssohn score to Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here’s the overture. While you listen to music, write fairy poems, or an ode to summer. Here are fairy songs and poems by Shakespeare.
Make a pot of sun tea. Take a clean glass jar and fill it with water. Add some tea bags, 4 bags for two quarts of water, cover the jar with a lid and let it sit in the sun. You can also add herbs or sliced fruit if you like, for example, black tea bags with mint leaves and lemon slices. I suggest making herbal tea, such as dried orange peel with hibiscus. Let the tea brew, covered, on a sunny windowsill or even outside for several hours. Here’s a recipe for dried herbal sun tea. You know the tea is ready when it takes on the color of tea. Leftovers can be refrigerated.
Wake up before dawn and greet the new day! Dawn ceremony is an ancient practice, a way of giving thanks for each day. Greet the dawn in your way. I recommend sipping a special mug of tea (maybe some leftover herbal sun tea) as you watch the sun rise. Wear a sun hat and sunglasses if it’s a bright day. Speak or write a list of gratitudes for the year, the summer, the day. Then make a special breakfast, a salute to the sun, perhaps eggs sunny side up!