At Summer Solstice, the sun has reached its highest point in the sky, and the earth is brimming with fertility. The god is at the peak of his power, and the goddess is heavily pregnant. This year Summer Solstice falls on Sunday June 21, which is also Father's Day! At Midsummer, we celebrate the earth's bounty. The weather is beautiful, the gardens are overflowing, and the animals are showing off their new families.

    Summer Solstice is also known as Litha, after an ancient fertility goddess of Europe and North Africa. June itself is named after Juno, the queen of heaven and consort of Jupiter, the Father God. In its usual attempt to confuse pagan holidays with Christian ones, the Christian Church designated June 24 as St-John-the-Baptist Day. Many of the same rites traditionally associated with Beltane were also celebrated at Litha, which is also a festival of fire and fertility. Celebrants lit magickal fires to commemorate the god's power and to keep him from vanishing too quickly-they lit bonfires, carried torches around the fields, and rolled flaming wheels along the ground. They drove cattle between the fires and jumped over themselves to ensure fertility. There were many hand-fastings in June as people who had conceived at the Beltane fires announced their commitments.

    Take time at Midsummer to honor the earth in your celebrations. Look at the products you use in your home and check them for hidden toxins-cleaners, laundry soap, drain openers, paint thinners. Arrange to take them all to a hazardous waste disposal site, and replace them with more earth-friendly products. Shaklee, Ecover, and Seventh Generation all have lines of earth-friendly cleaning products. (For recipes for earth- and kid-friendly cleaning products, see Clean and Green by Annie Berthold-Bond.) Start a recycle bin, if you don't already have one. Most garbage companies will take a lot of recyclables. Start composting; a compost bin can be built easily out of a few 2 by 4's and some chicken wire. (Remember not to compost animal scraps, as these will attract scavengers!)

    Activities to do with your kids include making solar images, gathering herbs, and marking the passage of the sun. You can make solar images in many ways: Decorate grapevine wreaths with dried flowers, raffia, yarn, and ribbons. Make suns out of modeling clay and carve jolly faces on them; then bake and paint them. Cut oranges into slices and hang them in a sunny window to dry. Stretch a piece of fabric in a decorative embroidery hoop and let the kids draw on it with fabric paint. Cross 4 slender sticks and weave yarn around them to make a variation of the old God's Eye craft. Make a Sun Child crown for each child, using a small grapevine wreath or a crown shape cut from cardboard. Decorate them with flowers, ribbons, cords, sequins, rhinestones, or glow-in-the-dark paint.

    Midsummer was a traditional time to harvest many herbs for drying. St John's Wort is one traditionally harvested then; it takes its name from St John's Day. Many Pagans use a white handled knife, or bolline, to cut their herbs; other traditional tools would be a crescent-shaped sickle of brass, or knives of flint, obsidian, or stag antler, as many ancient traditions forbade touching the plant with iron or steel. Harvest no more than 2/3 of the plant, and hang it to dry inside paper bags with holes punched in them. You can also dry herbs on parchment-paper lined cookie sheets in a very low oven. When they're dry, store them whole in glass jars away from the light, clearly labeled.

    One traditional use for herbs at Midsummer was to make protection sachets for family and even livestock. Some good protection herbs are dill, St John's Wort, tarragon, periwinkle, basil, angelica, rosemary, and mistletoe. (Mistletoe was traditionally gathered by the Druids at Midsummer, using golden sickles.) You can simply tie sprigs of herbs together and hang them in a window or over a pet's bed, or place the leaves on a square of cloth which you then draw up and tie with yarn. You can do other spells to protect family animals at this time too; one of the best known is the Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign. This was painted on a round board and hung on the end of a barn. The different patterns had different meanings: 6-pointed rosette for protection, oak leaves for strength, 4-pointed star symbolizing the sun.

    Spend the day being aware of the sun. Note its position in the sky, the shadows it creates. Visit a lake or river and watch the patterns made by the sunlight on the water. Light a bonfire in celebration of the sun's power. There are 9 traditional herbs that should be burned on a Midsummer bonfire: St John's Wort, rue, vervain, mistletoe, lavender, feverfew, meadowsweet, heartsease, and trefoil (clover). As the bonfire burns, encourage family members to write habits they'd like to get rid of on small pieces of paper and burn them on the fire. Make sure to mark the passing of the sun at sunset.

    Foods for Midsummer are much the same as those for Beltane: anything spicy, fiery, or grilled is good. Make a fruit flambé by pouring brandy over a fruit salad and lighting it. Honey lemonade is a wonderful midsummer drink; mix 1 ½ tbs lemon juice and 3 tbs honey per cup of warm water; chill, and serve. Feast on spicy Mexican food, barbecued chicken and pork, strawberries and watermelon, and the veggies from your garden. Buckeye candies are one of my favorites: buckeyes ripen around Midsummer and were used by many Native Americans as protective amulets.