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 Midsummer Eve - this year 2018 June 22 - is probably the most popular festival day in Sweden, together with Christmas. Midsummer is an old pagan celebration, dating back to the Viking Era. It was a fertility rite originally, where the May pole was a phallic symbol, "impregnating" Mother nature. It was hoped that this would help to give a good harvest in the autumn.
The customs around Midsummer are many and very old. The May pole is still risen in all Sweden and people are playing old song and dancing games around it at nearly every village.
Nowadays Midsummer is a national holiday. Family and friends meet, eat herring and fresh potatoes and drink schnapps and beer.
The actual day of the celebration is also the longest day of the year (summer solstice), signifying that summer has reached the half-way point.
In modern times, Midsummer Day is celebrated on the Saturday between June 20 - 26.
This year - 2019 - it is celebrated June 22
A new rule in Church of Sweden says that we celebrate St John's Day at the Sunday after Midsummer Day. The correct date of St John's day is June 24.
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The Midsummer night is the night of the great and the hidden powers. Everything is filled with power: the dew, the flowers, the twigs of the trees, the water in the springs. Dew can heal sickness, the leaven gets better with drops of the dew of Midsummer night. Leaves can be used as dressing bandage and you can take away pain if you have some night leaves from the birches in your bath.
In folklore there are many ideas about the Midsummer Night. In earlier time people assembled around the springs to drink "marrow into the bones". They did not drink just water....
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A wreath or a bouquet with seven or nine (the traditions vary) is full of power. But you must pick the flowers all alone and in total silence. One flower from the churchyard increases the power even more. The ready bound wreath you may hang in the ceiling and let it remain there until it is time for the Christmas straw wreath. Your house will stay happy and healthy. A pair of young birches around the porch make happiness into the house, a twig of birch in the cornfield gives better harvest 
The bouquet of flowers under your pillow make you dream of your future husband, good if you can pick them at a crossroad from the roadbanks of three different roads . . .
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