Midsummer in the West is a joy to behold

Midsummer in the west really is the best. Christmas aside, this is the time of year when those of us away from home especially miss it. Those long days blending into one makes us all yearn to be out and about in the long evening.

It’s different in the city. Bathed as it is in unnatural light, the city is designed for darkness. It is a winter environment, and so it is the natural light that can go unnoticed in the urban world. For in an urban jungle, what difference does it make if the sun sets at 9 or 11pm? But of course, even at this time of year the sun never sets in Dublin as late as 11pm. The further west you go, the more the daylight delays its departure. There is always at least an extra 15 minutes of evening light in the West.

In truth that hardly matters, for the city day starts and ends earlier than the country day. In the city, no one makes their money from the land around them, so the seasons don’t matter so much. The alarms of city mice ring at 6am, and heads hit pillows long before 11pm. Country life operates to different tempos, different rhythms, and especially so at midsummer. The scheduling of the Michael Commins Show on Midwest Radio is made for Country in every way.

The memories of our county in late June are why all the Mayo exiles yearn for home right now. A sunny day on the 21st June at home is a work of beauty. Clinging as it does to the horizon, it simply feels like the sun will never go down. Nights like these are etched in all our memories and I well remember tramping around for hours as a boy in that endless light. In those days, school was already out, and the long weeks of summer stretched ahead. That might mean haymaking, silage and turf saving, but there were compensations too. As the song goes, it was summertime, and the living was easy. The days felt heavy but the mood was light.

Not even those who need the least sleep can quite manage to get the full span of their sleep in darkness. There is a sense that it never truly gets dark. The whole world moves to a different rhythm, and you step outside into it and you feel alive.

That is why we celebrate midsummer. The rituals around it are old and deeply observed because they remind us – or at least they should – that we are very small and we rely on things that are far greater than us to survive and thrive in this world of ours.

The winter equivalent on 21st December is also celebrated, but differently, with relief. Then we mark the turning point that confirms that the sun will come back, whereas the 21st June is a celebration of the bounty the sun’s return is bringing with it. The light brings hope, opportunity, the promise of good times.

And the celebrations go on for three days, from the solstice itself on the 21st, to the bonfires that light up on St John’s Eve on the 23rd. Rather like Christmas not falling on the exact day of midwinter, the fact that Bonfire Night comes after the exact midsummer is rooted in an interesting tale. The marking of St John’s Eve is a very old tradition among us. As best we know, the practice comes from pre-Christian Ireland, a lighting of a communal fire which was then incorporated into Christian tradition by associating it with the feast of St John the Baptist. This was done by imaginatively connecting the lighted fire with John’s role in baptising the light of the world, Jesus Christ.

Now when I was a boy back in the 1980s, the St John’s Eve bonfire on the 23rd of June was certainly a bigger thing than it is now. It was planned for weeks. There was a lot of excitement about and vast amounts of energy went into finding the energy sources that would fuel the fires. We had no easy ways to find that fuel because we didn’t have phones – certainly not mobile ones. Plus, the range of additional attractions was small enough, so Bonfire Night was box office and we gave it our all.

Let us not overly romanticise that. Fair to say, the connection between the lighted fire and the role of John in baptising the light of the world was not foremost on our minds. The focus as I recall it was rather more lowbrow. Around this time of year back then, every young fella in Kiltimagh – and in every town west of the Shannon – was on the hunt for anything that could burn. Foolish you if you left a tyre or pallet lying about the back streets of the town in those days. If you did, it would be scavenged cleaner than any wild animal would manage on a carcass. Your street cred as a young man was determined by whatever you could turn up to add to the bonfire. Our green credentials were not burnished or brandished much in those days.

But behind it lay something that was noble. Our Bonfire Night was most likely to have been a call for a bumper crop from the harvest season ahead. In an agricultural society that made a lot of sense and, in olden days, would have made quite literally all the difference. And of course, that is why Bonfire Night is a country thing, whereas in Dublin you will meet lots of people who have absolutely no idea about a bonfire tradition on 23rd June.

The tradition of a bonfire was built around a communal act, designed to bring fortune and good outcomes for that community. Adapted as it is these days for a more environmentally conscious time, long may that tradition survive. I hope you mark and enjoy it with neighbours and friends later this week.

And of course, once that ritual is complete and midsummer has passed, the evenings will get darker, but it will – thanks be to God – be a long time yet before we notice it.