Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a bright star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. —J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
June is a very interesting month, liturgically. On the one hand the drama of moveable and immoveable feasts illustrating the life of Christ and His Church that began with the first Sunday in Advent back in late November or early December ends with the feast of the Sacred Heart, the Friday after the last day of the Octave of Corpus Christi. The rest of the year, as Dom Gueranger tells us, is filled with Sundays, feasts, and ferias that illustrate the teachings He left with His Church. But on June 24th is the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the precursor and first cousin to Our Lord, who at once ends the Old Testament and begins the new. It is a rather unique observance, because only St. John the Baptist on this day, Our Lady on September 8, and Our Lord himself on Christmas grace the calendar with the days on which they were born in the flesh – all the others (save a few, like Bl. Emperor Karl, whose feast is his wedding anniversary) are either the day of the Saint’s death or the translation of his relics.
That being the case, the Precursor’s Nativity immediately forces our eyes forward for a short time to the onset of Advent and Christmas: no sooner are we finished with one cycle then we are made to remember that it is soon approaching once more. Moreover, for those of us of French-Canadian descent, St. John is our patron Saint, like St. Patrick for the Irish. The “Jour du Juin” features parades and other celebrations in Francophone areas across Canada – and even a few in the United States.
But the night before, St. John’s Eve, is a mysterious one. Also called Midsummer night (and familiar from Shakespeare for its elven properties), in many places in Europe, Latin America, and even Louisiana, it is a sort of Halloween in summer, with all sorts of strange tales told of the fairies, and of the mysterious fern-seed that only blooms on this magical night – and can make one who picks it invisible. Different cultures speak of other plants to be picked this night, like yarrow and St. John’s Wort, held to drive off witches and sundry other evil forces.
But perhaps the biggest and most universal custom of this enchanted night is the bonfire. All over Europe – Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant – the lighting of the St. John’s fires is a universal custom. It is often blessed by a priest, with flowing formula from the Rituale Romanum: “Lord God, almighty Father, the light that never fails and the source of all light, sanctify + this new fire, and grant that after the darkness of this life we may come unsullied to you who are light eternal; through Christ our Lord.” Dom Gueranger’s description of the custom has his usual flair: “Joy, which is the characteristic of this Feast, outstripped the limits of the sacred precincts and shed itself abroad, as far even as the infidel Mussulmans. Though at Christmas, the severity of the season necessarily confined to the domestic hearth all touching expansion of private piety, the lovely summer nights, at Saint John’s tide, gave free scope to popular display of lively faith among various nationalities. In this way, the people seemed to make up for what circumstances prevented in the way of demonstrations to the Infant God, by the glad honors they could render to the cradle of his Precursor. Scarce had the last rays of the setting sun died away, than all the world over, from the far East to the furthest West, immense columns of flame arose from every mountain top; and in an instant, every town and village and smallest hamlet was lighted up. “Saint John’s fires,” as they called them, were an authentic testimony, repeating over and over again the truth of the words of the Angel and of prophecy, whereby that universal gladness was announced which would hail the Birth day of Elizabeth’s son.”
He goes on to describe the antiquity and importance of the custom: “It may almost be said of the ‘Saint John’s fires,’ that they date, like the festival itself, from the very beginning of Christianity. They made their appearance, at least, from the earliest days of the period of peace, like a sample fruit of popular initiative; but not indeed without sometimes exciting the anxious attention of the Fathers and of Councils, ever on the watch to banish every superstitious notion from manifestations, which otherwise so happily began to replace the pagan festivities proper to the solstices. But the necessity of combating some abuses, which are just as possible in our own days as in those, did not withhold the Church from encouraging a species of demonstration which so well answered to the very character of the feast. ‘Saint John’s fires’ made a happy completion to the liturgical solemnity; testifying how one and the same thought possessed both the mind of Holy Church and of the terrestrial city; for the organisation of these rejoicings originated with the civil corporations and the expenses thereof were defrayed by the municipalities. Thus the privilege of lighting the bonfire was usually reserved to some dignitary of the civil order. Kings themselves taking part in the common merry-making would esteem it an honour to give this signal to popular gladness; Louis XIV, as late as 1648, for example, lighted the bonfire on the ‘place de Grève,’ as his predecessors had done. In other places, as is even now done in Catholic Brittany, the clergy were invited to bless the piles of wood, and to cast thereon the first brand; whilst the crowd, bearing flaming torches, would disperse over the neighboring country, amidst the ripening crops, or would march along the ocean side, following the tortuous cliff-paths, shouting many a gladsome cry, to which the adjacent islets would reply by lighting up their festive fires.
“In some parts, the custom prevailed of rolling a ‘burning wheel;’ this was a self-revolving red-hot disk that, rolling along the streets or down from the hill-tops, represented the movement of the sun, which attains the highest point in his orbit, to begin at once his descent; thus was the word of the Precursor brought to mind, when speaking of the Messias, he says: He must increase, and I must decrease. The symbolism was completed by the custom then in vogue, of burning old bones and rubbish on this day which proclaims the end of the Ancient Law, and the commencement of the New Covenant, according to the holy Scripture, where it is written: … And new store coming on, you shall cast away the old.
“Blessed are those populations amongst whom is still preserved something of such customs, whence the old simplicity of our forefathers drew a gladness assuredly more true and more pure than their descendants seek in festivities wherein the soul has no part!”
But, of course, St. John’s Eve is not the only such observance in what was once Christendom. Lammas Eve, July 31, the night before the feast of St. Peter-in-Chains was the next. Halloween, the Eve of All Saints, was another night of bonfires and storytelling; even in the United States – as viewers of the old musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, may remember – the custom was maintained into the 20th century. After the Vespers of the Dead on the Feast of All Saints, candles are lit in Catholic cemeteries around the world, as they are on the following day of All Souls. The Twelve Days of Christmas are replete with lights, as, of course, is the great feast of Candlemas. At the end of April is May Eve or Walpurgis night, which is quite similar in many ways to St. John’s Eve.
Many commentators like to see in all of these mere pagan survivals – but this is as specious as assigning the same motivation to the use of evergreen trees, holly, and mistletoe at Christmas. The truth is that all of these lights have to do with the fight of the light of Christianity against the forces of the dark, as Dom Gueranger put it. The centrepiece of all of this is really the lighting of the New Fire at the Holy Saturday Vigil – the Eve of the greatest feast of the year. Here we see a concrete demonstration of several very important Christian themes: the struggle of light and darkness and the interplay between them; the symbolism of the flame of the Holy Ghost as the newly lit Paschal Candle is dipped into the Baptismal Font in blessing; and in a word, the light shining in darkness, and the darkness not comprehending it.
Indeed, it may be said that the massive misunderstanding of these beautiful fire festivals and their many associated customs is in itself a sign of the modern dark comprehending nothing of the light. In the days before electricity, the light of candle and fireplace was a precious and beautiful thing. Those going to the Vigil Mass would extinguish all the lights in their house. Just as neighbours when requested would send a coal in a container to relight the lamps and fireplace of an adjoining house where they gone out, so too on Holy Saturday. On that special day, people would extinguish all their lamps, candles, and fires. When the candles were lit from the Paschal Candle, the congregation would bring the burning candles home and relight the lights of their own house. They symbolised the coming of the Divine grace into everyone’s homes.
We have come a long way since the medieval times when, in the words of the Time-Life book, Night Creatures, “A bird flying over nighttime Europe would see a landscape of almost unrelieved black and gray. A few points of brightness might shine in coastal regions; these were beacons for sailors. In towns might appear moving rows of illumination that signified torchlight processions. There were no street lights, except at crossroads near cities.”
The same bird’s descendants would see electric light in ever major town, lighting up the sky. But the moral darkness that encounters us is far more powerful. Let us continue to stay close to those truths of the Faith and those practises which are the light that continues to stream the modern dark from the realms of endless day.
