More Ways to Celebrate Litha! (Patreon)

Here are some more ways you can celebrate Litha! There’s 30 different ideas to take a peek at! You can pick one, do a few or whatever you’d like. How do you celebrate? These are great sources below with so much good information!

Litha, also known Midsummer, is the official first day of summer. The summer solstice is a liminal time, when the day is the longest it will be all year and the night is the shortest. We celebrate the warmth of the sun’s rays on us and its nourishing effect on the earth—on the plants, trees, and even the waters. Here is the meaning of Litha, as well as 15 SIMPLE ways to celebrate Litha this summer.

The Meaning of Litha

Midsummer is all about celebrating the sun. Our ancient ancestors believed the sun was the life force of the earth – it’s presence kept them warm and fed. Summer is a time when seeds sown during the Spring grow and begin to produce their fruits. The Goddess is thought to be in her Mother form during the Summer season, heavy with child (the God), preparing to give birth during the Harvest season.

1. One Simple Way to Celebrate Litha: Get Outside!

Probably the easiest and most important way to celebrate the Midsummer sabbat is to get outside! This spiritual path is all about connecting with nature and the best way to do that is to be in nature.

2. Explore a Park or Forest

There are so many fun ways to celebrate Litha outside. What better day to go exploring in a nearby park or forest than on the Midsummer sabbat? If it’s extremely hot where you live, stay hydrated and if you run into a creek or river, take a dip!

3. Go to the Beach

Go to the beach to celebrate Litha. Not only do you have the sun to enjoy, the water is there too. This is the time when the sun moves into Cancer, which is a water sign. Fire and water together make summer one of the best seasons to go to the beach. Build a sandcastle near the water and let the ocean take it away, along with your worries. This is an easy and fun way to celebrate Midsummer.

4. Throw a Pool Party

Throw a pool party for friends and family. They don’t have to know it’s to celebrate Litha! Similar to the beach, you’ll soak up 2 of summer’s main elements: fire and water.

5. Greet the Sunrise

If it’s just too hot and you can’t take the heat, get up extra early and celebrate Litha by greeting the sunrise. Sip on your coffee and say hi to the sun OR practice some yoga sun salutations. Breathe in the sunshine.

6. Honor the Fairies with Fairy Houses

Litha is known throughout folklore and mythology to be a time when the fairies abound. What better way to celebrate the Midsummer sabbat than to honor the fairies? Make a fairy house for your yard or garden by hand or using a pre-made birdhouse from a craft store. You can have your kids (and you) paint the houses bright colors to appease the wee folk. Then hang or place the fairy houses around your garden or in the trees. Don’t place them too close to your house, as fairies can be rather mischievous and you might not want to invite extra mischief into your home on Midsummer (especially if you already have active pets or kids!)

7. Leave Fairy Offerings

Leave treats for the fairies. They particularly love sweets, for example: cakes, cookies, brownies, doughnuts, sweetbreads and more! They also adore milk, cream, butter, as well as a hearty alcoholic beverage. Some of the drinks they like are mead, wine, ale, and brandy. You can try almost any food or beverage but they typically like the sweet, boozy kind. Be sure to put some thought and effort behind your fairy offerings and don’t thank the fairies. They hate being thanked!

8. Celebrate Litha with a Feast

What is one thing that nearly everyone loves to do? Eat! A tasty way to celebrate Litha is to throw a feast. Our ancestors celebrated every holiday with a feast. Often the feasts would last for DAYS. Invite friends and family over (if you want to share) and have a large dinner or cook-out. Ask others to bring a dish for a potluck, this way you don’t end up buying and cooking food for lots of people. Some great summer dishes include: seafood (crab, shrimp, fish, oysters), beer-can chicken on the grill, watermelon, berries, lemonade, avocado, summer squash, and baked potatoes.

9. Celebrate With Litha Crafts

An easy way to celebrate Litha with a little divine creativity is to get crafting! Fun crafts for Midsummer include: making suncatchers, crafting floral crowns or wreaths, dreamcatchers, craft a sun wheel, salt dough sun plaques, a Summer besom, etc.

10. Have a Bonfire

While the winter seems like the best time for a bonfire, the Litha sabbat is also a great time because it is a celebration of the fire element. To our ancestors, fire came from the sun and they honored it with large bonfires. The best time to do this is at night, sit around the fire, tell stories and make s’mores together.

11. Celebrate Litha With Divination

Fire and water scrying are two wonderful forms of divination that are especially effective on the Litha sabbat. If you have a bonfire, fire scrying should be easy. To scry with water, use a bowl filled with water or scry patterns in the ocean/lake, etc. Cloud scrying is also fun to do with others to celebrate Litha.

12. Refresh Your Altar

If you haven’t already, Litha is a great time to clean, cleanse and re-decorate your altar for the Summer season. I like to take everything off of my altar, clean it, then cleanse it with smoke. Following that, I anoint my tools and altar with an oil that corresponds to the season. Then I add decorations to honor Litha and the sun.

13. Cast Spells for Fruition on Litha

Litha is a great time to cast spells for success, abundance, love and parenthood. Any seeds you’ve sown in the Spring come to fruition in the Summer, as do your magical intentions.

14. Pick Wildflowers

If you have a local field or forest, go out with a few friends/family members and pick wildflowers. Take your time doing this. Smell the flowers. Thank nature for its beauty. Take some home to make a bouquet for your altar.

15. Honor Sun Gods & Goddesses

An easy and spiritual way to celebrate Litha is to honor any solar deities with offerings, prayers, etc. Some of the sun gods and goddesses include: Horus, Huitzilopochtli, Saule, Aine, Belenos, Helios, Etain, Yu Yi, Macha, Ra, Sunna, and more.

20. Get your body moving!

Litha is a magical, mystical time of year. Why not host a drum circle or spiral dance? You'll need a large group for this, but it's a lot of fun once you get everyone moving. In addition to being entertaining (and a great stress reliever), a drum circle or a ritualized dance serves another purpose—that of raising energy. The more you build, the more people will feed off of it. Invite a group of friends over, let them know there will be music and dance, and see what happens. Be sure to provide refreshments for afterwards—drumming and dancing can be draining for some people.

21. Create/redo your altar.

A perfect way to set the mood for Litha is to create an altar as a sacred space. Supplies/materials to consider using for your Litha altar include: symbols of the sun, twinkle lights, candles, circles, discs, spirals, sunflowers, seashells, feathers, strawberries, stones (especially in a circle), bees, butterflies, birds, fire imagery, faeries, Oak leaves, Cinnamon, Mugwort, Rosemary, Gold, Citrine, Emerald, Jade, Peridot, Carnelian, and as far as colors, stick to gold, green, yellow, orange, red, and white.

22. Practice Green Magick.

This is a perfect time to see how green your thumb is! Buy some plants, seeds, bulbs, and plant them in your backyard, in your home, in raised beds, in a community garden. And don’t forget about working with Faeries! You can also just spend time in nature, or meander around a luscious garden.

23. Work With Fire.

You could have a traditional ceremony with two bonfires and have people (and people in relationships), dance through in between the fires to boost their abundance, you could watch someone spin fire, you could do a candle gazing meditation, you could burn your intentions in a small cauldron, you could host a barbecue on a grill in your backyard. Be careful with fire, obviously, though!

24. Make A Viking Boat.

Get crafty and fashion a raft-type boat that you can fill with offerings, and then float out to stream. Popsicle sticks and origami paper work well. The idea is that your offerings are put into the sail and you let it sail out into the sunset (or sunrise if you’re an early bird!). You can write your intentions for the season on the sail, too.

25. Meet The Sun.

Depending on your sleep schedule, you can find out what time the sun is rising and setting in your location, and go set up camp to watch a gorgeous sunrise/set on the longest day of the year. Great the sun, do Sun Salutation poses, do your own ritual, do a meditation, make out with your loved one, do cartwheels, take a nap in a hammock. Great the sun as it rises or leaves with gratitude and tell it how grateful you are out loud.

26. Make A Bird Feeder.

Birds are great to connect with this time of year, and it’s really easy to give back to them and to bring them to you — with food! So make a bird feeder with pinecones, peanut butter, birdseed, apples, etc. Or you can buy a fancy bird feeder for hummingbirds or whatever you like! Try connecting with the birds, bird watching, going to an aviary, and looking up what birds you identify with and see the most and what that symbolism means for you at this point in your life.

27. Do The Spiral Dance.

Learn how to do the Spiral Dance and teach it to your friends so you can do it together.

28. Make A Love Sachet.

This is a simple craft that will draw abundance in the form of love into your life. Focus on the kind of love you want more of in your life as you craft it. Your just need some cloth (natural fabrics are good), flower petals (rose and lavender are good), and maybe a crystal (like Rose Quartz or Amethyst) to put in before you tie it up with needle and thread or just a piece of ribbon. Charge it under the sun, then put it on your altar!

29. Attend A Handfasting.

Handfastings are beautiful ceremonies that are easily explained to people who don’t understand them as a Pagan wedding, but it’s so much more than that. It’s one of the best and intimate types of celebrations of love I’ve ever seen in person. You’re literally being bound to the other person, with personal items, and you have a ceremony the same way you would in a wedding, but it’s just a little different. Look into it! The Summer Solstice marks the height of Handfasting season, and the first one I ever attended was on June 20th, and they were just doing that because it was both of their birthdays, not because it was near the Solstice. Funny how things work, huh?

30. Create a Litha Ritual.

Lastly, the best thing you can do for yourself is to just create a ritual that feels the best to you! There are tons of other things you can do to celebrate Lithathat I haven’t mentioned, and maybe you want to incorporate those into your own personalized ritual. For example, hosting a Litha party on June 20th or 21st, decorating your house, getting a Tarot reading, educating people on the origins of Litha, doing Litha/summer-themed crafts, making a cinnamon broom, doing the Spiral Dance, looking up any of the gods or goddesses associated with this Sabbat (like Aestas, Aine, Aphrodite, or Solntse), put out an offering to Faeries, visit a sacred well, leave on a candle all day (or an LED candle so it’s safer) as an eternal flame, take a ritual bath with purifying minerals and herbs, connecting to nature, being completely naked in nature, say a Litha blessing/prayer, etc, wearing gold, yellow, orange, red, and/or white. Do what feels right to you!

Sources:

https://hosstools.com/product/black-oil-sunflower/

https://uncustomary.org/10-ways-to-celebrate-litha/

https://otherworldlyoracle.com/celebrate-litha/