Midsummer Night celebrations, referred to as "setting the watch" for the year, were much more common in England before the Protestant and Lutheran reformations in England. Ancestrally, locals celebrated the turn of the season with large fires, night-long parties and festive debauchery. Ghost stories were a common entertainment at these gatherings, as many believed at the time that ghosts could pass between the worlds of the dead and the living during the summer solstice. The evening's most common and important ritual was fire-jumping, where the most agile youth were encouraged to jump over the roaring fire, the jump's height predicting the strength of the next season's crops.
The early part of the 15th century saw a massive Christian reformation in England. In the process, the church systematically dismantled the practice of competing pagan celebrations, including the wild parties traditionally associated with the summer solstice. Within a few decades, Midsummer's Eve festivals were effectively banned and replaced by The Feast of St. John the Baptist. The change was made to celebrate the saint's birth; in practice, it aimed to bring would-be revelers away from their bonfires and into a more staid church context.
The biggest Midsummer Night gathering currently celebrated in England takes place at Stonehenge. Here, the iconic site's "Heel Stone" and "Slaughter Stone," both of which sit outside the main circle, align perfectly with the sun as it rises on Midsummer's Day after a long night of revelry. Staff of the English Heritage commission manage the event, which draws an annual crowd of approximately 20,000 people, including the National Trust, local farmers, pagan and Druid groups, the police and a full complement of other health and safety workers.
Kit Hill looms over the rocky coastal landscape on the border of the southern English counties of Cornwall and Devonshire. The site is profoundly historic: Neolithic and Bronze Age ruins push out occasionally from the grassy soil. It's here, in these lush natural surroundings, that pagan revelers and friends gather around midsummer bonfires. Spectators listen to a ceremony spoken in Cornish, the region's ancestral tongue. Afterwards, a costumed "Lady of the Flowers" casts a sacred garland into the flames, and everyone feasts and dances until dawn.
