St. John's Day

Feast of John the Baptist

Religions survive best that adapt to the old custom of the convert—by taking sympathetically to them and giving them renewed meaning.  Assigning the summer solstice, exactly six months away in the seasonal calendar from the birth of the Savior, to fete St. John the Baptist, is an example of religious syncretism.  Baptism is the principal rite of admission into the Christian Church.  It offers both the washing away of sins and a rebirth, and it grew out of an older Jewish practice.  Who better to incorporate the idea of purification once associated with cleansing by fire to bathing at sunrise than he who consecrated the rite of purification upon Christ.

It was custom in England, on St. John’s Eve, to light large bonfires after sundown, providing the revelers and warding off evil spirits.  There would be feasting and partying, dancing, games, bartering and all forms of celebration and, as in other areas, leaping the fire was common practice.  It should be noted, interestingly enough, that St. John, though a Catholic figure, was seen by the early Celtic-Catholic people as a very pagan one.  He was known as “the Oak King” and had a strong connection to the nature in the wilderness.  He was depicted as a horned figure and, at times, with the lower portion of his body as a satyr, though people regarded him as a Christian Pan.  This may seem odd to a modern pagan, but keep in mind the fact that the early Christians, particularly those it the British Isles, simply put knew names to old deities.  

Modern day Christians celebrate mid-Summer as St. John’s Day and celebrates his birth, much as Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ and coincides with Yule.  The reason given as to why Saint John’s birth is celebrated with other Saint’s day occurs at death is that John is a special case since he was born exactly 6 months before Christ to announce the coming of the Messiah.

This last tidbit is extremely conspicuous, in that John is the ONLY saint in the entire Catholic hagiography whose feast day is a commemoration of his birth, rather than his death. A generation ago, Catholic nuns were fond of explaining that a saint is commemorated on the anniversary of his or her death because it was really a 'birth' into the Kingdom of Heaven. But John the Baptist, the sole exception, is emphatically commemorated on the anniversary of his birth into THIS world. Although this makes no sense viewed from a Christian perspective, it makes perfect poetic sense from the viewpoint of Pagan symbolism.