01 January 2020

Ziemassvētki (Winter Festival) in Latvia - Sundays in My City

Latvia still celebrates the Winter Solstice!  I'd been searching for a Winter Solstice celebration and was surprised to find that many cold, northern places have Summer Solstice celebrations but I wasn't finding anything for the winter.  I was surprised as I would think places with long, dark winters would want to celebrate the point where the days start getting longer. Well, since I hadn't yet been to Latvia I was happy to hear that they have a true, public Winter Solstice celebration so off to Riga I went!

Riga is a small city and it was not at all crowded which I greatly appreciated!  The entire population of Latvia is less than 2 million.  This was my first trip to the Baltic states and my first former Soviet country.  I had thought it was the furthest east I've ever been in Europe but when I double checked the map I realized that my trip to Romania and Bulgaria back in 2011 was further east.




Celebration of the Winter Solstice (which occurs somewhere around the 21st of December) long predates the modern christmas holiday and many of the current christmas festivities (evergreen trees inside, yule logs, etc) have their roots in Winter Solstice traditions. Even though Latvia did eventually succumb to christian invasion, it didn't give up its ancient rituals such as celebrating the Winter Solstice like many other cultures did.

On the evening of the Winter Solstice in Riga, there were songs (sung in Latvian, old Russian (I was told), maybe other languages I didn't understand?), some dancing, people wearing masks, logs dragged through the old town while chanting and singing and then set alight.















The log dragging/burning tradition was explained so: "The merry-makers will drag a log from one homestead to another, gathering all misfortunes from the past year.  Afterward the log will be set ablaze, and everyone will be able to burn away his/her negative thoughts, failures, fears."

What I like so much about the Winter Solstice celebration (as compared to the ubiquitous red-suited man bringing toys) is that it isn't about STUFF.  It's not about obligation, going into debt, annoying-as-hell music for a month+.  It's just about celebrating the end of the longest night of the year and welcoming the return of more daylight.  Saying goodbye to negative thoughts, failures, and fears?  Sounds good to me!

Even though I couldn't understand any of the words that were being said/sung, I appreciated the ceremony and the ritual of the celebration.  And I applaud Latvia for holding onto its traditions!

What negative thoughts, failures, or fears are you saying goodbye to (or what positive thoughts are you welcoming along with the return of light)?




Sundays In My City

N.B. Any negative comments about the evils of celebrating a "pagan" tradition or anything about devil worship or how we're going to hell or basically anything along those lines will be immediately deleted.  My blog, my rules.