[16] The historian Ronald Hutton says that the "lighting of festive fires upon Saint John's Eve is first recorded as a popular custom by Jean Belethus, a theologian at the University of Paris, in the early twelfth century", but is undoubtedly much older.

[20] On St John's Day in 1333, Petrarch watched women at Cologne rinsing their hands and arms in the Rhine "so that the threatening calamities of the coming year might be washed away by bathing in the river.

"[21] In 1482, German Franciscan friar Paul Walther provided an early documentation of the Albanian traditional practice of lighting fires (zjarre) on Saint John's eve.

[22] In the 16th century AD, English historian John Stow described the celebration of Midsummer:[17] the wealthier sort also before their doors near to the said bonfires would set out tables on the vigils furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on the festival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit, and to be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for his benefits bestowed on them.

These were called bonfires as well of good amity amongst neighbours that, being before at controversy, were there by the labour of others reconciled, and made of bitter enemies, loving friends, as also for the birtue that a great fire hat to purge the infection of the air.

In the 4th century AD, the undivided Christian Church made 24 June the feast day of Saint John the Baptist; it marks his birth, which the Gospel of Luke says was six months before Jesus.

[26][27] Christians marked the birth of Jesus (Christmas) on 25 December, the Roman date of the winter solstice, so the feast of St John was set exactly six months earlier.

In Neo-druidism, the term Alban Hefin is used for the summer solstice, as coined by the 18th century Welsh Romantic author and prolific literary forger Iolo Morganwg.

Midsummer is traditionally celebrated throughout Europe, including in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Flanders, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and parts of the United Kingdom (Cornwall especially), as well as other parts of the world: Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, and also in the Southern Hemisphere (mostly in Brazil, Argentina and Australia).

[37] In Austria, the Midsummer solstice is celebrated each year with a procession of ships down the Danube River as it flows through the wine-growing Wachau Valley north of Vienna.

[39] As the Northeast of Brazil is largely arid or semi-arid, these festivals not only coincide with the end of the rainy seasons in most states of the region but also offer people the opportunity to thank Saint John for the rain.

It is the day where the medieval wise men and women (the doctors of that time) would gather special herbs that they needed for the rest of the year to cure people.

According to Eastern Orthodox tradition, the eve of the day of the Nativity of John the Baptist is celebrated with festivals in many towns and villages, both in the mainland and in the Greek isles.

Traditionally, the midsummer's celebration is called Klidonas (Κλήδονας) meaning sign or oracle, and was considered a time when unmarried girls would discover their potential mates through a ritual.

It is also customary to this day to burn the Mayday wreaths that are used to decorate the doors of the houses for the previous two months, in large communal bonfires, accompanied by music, dancing and jumping over the flames.

[citation needed] The custom survived longest and in the most complete form in the northwestern part of the linguistic region, where as late as the 1930s they still lit a Midsummer Night fire.

In medieval Florence, midsummer celebrations were "an occasion for dramatic representations of the Baptist's life and death" and "the feast day was marked by processions, banquets, and plays, culminating in a fireworks show that the entire city attended.

Ringing the bachîn (a large brass preserving pan) at midsummer to frighten away evil spirits survived as a custom on some farms until the 1940s and has been revived as a folk performance in the 21st century.

Typical dishes include Caldo verde (Portuguese cabbage and potato soup), sardinhas assadas na brasa (open grilled sardines), boroa (oven baked bread), funfair food (mostly cotton candy and farturas, a fried batter with sugar and cinnamon) and drink (mostly) red wine and água-pé (grape juice with a small percentage of alcohol).

Other typical activities include trying to clime a pau-de-sebo (greased pole) to claim a reward (frequently a cod or ham) and Rusgas which are a mixture of running, singing, dancing and tomfoolery, mostly by youthful groups.

In Lisbon, in Avenida da Liberdade, there are the Marchas, a parade of folklore and costumes of the inhabitants from the city's different traditional quarters, with hundreds of singers and dancers and a vast audience applauding their favourite participants.

Póvoa de Varzim's Saint Peter Festival keeps traditional "Santos Populares" elements, such as the bonfire, street celebrations, and include the rusgas, in which inhabitants of one quarter (bairro) parade to other neighbourhoods in the evening of 28 June.

The term Sânziene originates in the Latin "Sancta Diana", and superstitions relating to this day are mainly romantic in nature, referring to young girls and their marriage prospects.

[citation needed] The Yakut people of the Sakha Republic celebrate a solstitial ceremony, Yhyakh, involving tethering a horse to a pole and circle dancing around it.

Among traditions are that girls watch the sunrise through their wreath, to become red as the sun, towards the evening in the heights, Ivanjske vatre (kresovi, bonfire) are lit, and dancing and singing takes place.

[citation needed] In late 14th-century England, John Mirk of Lilleshall Abbey, Shropshire, gives the following description: "At first, men and women came to church with candles and other lights and prayed all night long.

With the advent of non-conformist beliefs on the Welsh socio-political culture, this (among so many other similar festivals) suffered greatly, and its observance finally died out in south-east Wales by the end of the 19th century.

[88] The town is also the home of the Swedish Pavilion historic site, built as an international exposition building for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and features a maypole year-round.

Ever since 51 Swedish immigrants came to Aroostook County, Maine in 1870, supported by a Legislative Act authored by William W. Thomas Jr., who had served as American Consul in Sweden under Abraham Lincoln, residents of the town have celebrated Midsommar.

The Seattle neighborhood of Fremont puts on a large Summer Solstice Parade and Pageant, which for many years has controversially included painted naked cyclists.