The Torch Doesn't Light Itself

This past weekend we celebrated Jaanipäev (St. John's Day), the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and one of the biggest holidays in the Nordic calendar. Long before anyone called it St. John's Day, it was simply Midsummer. A pagan celebration that stretched across ancient Europe, from Britain to Ukraine, marking the longest day / shortest night of the year, depending on who you asked. When Christianity arrived, it didn't so much erase the old holiday as rename it: Midsummer fell close enough to the feast of John the Baptist that the two merged, and across the continent, Midsummer became St. John's Day. But the new name was mostly a coat of paint. A sixteenth-century Estonian chronicler wrote with some disgust about countrymen who valued the feast more than church. Who showed up, didn't go inside, and spent the day lighting bonfires, drinking, dancing, and singing instead. In Estonia, the day carries even more weight than that. Jaanipäev once marked the hinge of the…