23 June, 2019

Surprisingly, I had made it 28 years on this planet without attending a pagan summer solstice festival. By now, you’d expect it to be my annual tradition, but somehow it had eluded me… That is until this year when I went to Latvia - a place where such a celebration is an official national holiday. Naturally, I made absolutely sure to attend. Here is my story of how that went.

Every year on the 23rd of June (yes, I know the solstice is technically the 21st) the entire city of Riga shuts down to hold a festival to honor their pagan roots. Rightfully so, it goes from 5:00pm to 4:30 in the morning the next day. I got there around 8:00pm with Hana (see Awesome People page) while the sun was shining as bright as mid day. Earlier on, she had gone to the forest to make crowns out of leaves for the two of us. Upon entering, we saw a makeshift structure that reminded me a lot of True Detective (see above), and in the distance, we could hear horns and strings playing what I assume to be traditional Latvian music. We walked through the entrance and saw what looked like the whole city along the river. A conga line zipped past us and massive wooden pyres could be seen in every direction. We then both decided to go to one of the many beer tents in order to better fit in with our fellow festival goers.

Drinks in hand, we walked over to the main stage and listened. All five members of the band were dressed in traditional attire and were really getting into the mood. They were fun and their sound perfectly fit the occasion. Best of all, most of the people around us seemed to be enjoying their drinks and the music, as opposed to being on their phones. Unfortunately though, the second band did not live up to the first’s performance, and instead decided to play tacky modern pop music. Because of this, we chose to make our way down to the river instead of hanging around the stage.

We stayed for a few more hours, in which some random guy swiped one of my beers when my head was turned (props to him for being quick and disregarding sanitation). Around midnight, the wooden pyres were set on fire and everyone began throwing their leaf crowns into the flames. The sun wasn’t fully down yet due to our far north location. We decided to check the main stage one more time, but it was another tacky pop band killing the authentic vibe (if only the first band stayed on all night), but the crowd still seemed to be in good spirits, probably due to the tremendous amounts of booze available. We then left and decided to walk around the empty city.

It all made me wonder, ‘why did we give up paganism?’ Why did we replace drinking and dancing celebrations of joy with solemn ceremonies of restraint, self guilt, and judgment of others (western monotheism) or the dull perspective that everything is meaningless (atheism)? I mean, with paganism, you get to give thanks to awesome things like the sun, nature, animals, water, and all that good stuff that keeps us alive in a daily basis. We’s be more grateful for everything, instead of plundering it all as if its just something to be exploited (damn it Des Cartes and your mechanical view of everything non human). Anyway, I digress. Overall, the event was pretty fun. Food and booze were very affordable and the crowd and location were awesome. I just wish the first band stayed on longer.