23 June is the night we celebrate the shortest night of the year (though as I've been informed, it's actually 11 seconds longer than the night of 21 June) by making humongous bonfires, drinking way too much and trying to convince our friends who drank even more not to try and jump over those humongous bonfires.
There's also a St. John's eve tradition according to which unmarried girls have to pick nine different flowers (or seven if you're lazy) and climb over seven fences during which they aren't allowed to speak (this can also be skipped), then arrange the flowers into a wreath, put it under their pillow and then they're supposed to see the man they are going to marry in a dream.
We've done it twice before and in both cases I saw absolutely nothing - and I always have really crazy and vivid dreams! But I refuse to give up, so this year I was really prepared to do the whole wreath thing and dream about Jensen Ackles afterwards, but unfortunately it was raining too hard to do any sorts of flower-picking - we used up three canisters of gasoline just to get the fire going for long enough to take a picture.
Oh well. At least it gave me one more year of not accepting my faith when it comes to marriage and I can still believe I would have seen someone.
But here is a picture from a couple of years ago:
The next day you're supposed to take your wreath to a crosscrossroads and throw it over your left shoulder. If it gets stuck on a tree, you'll get married that year. Mine fell apart mid-air as I was throwing it. I guess some people are just hopeless...
*All photos taken from people whose battery didn't die at the most inconvenient moment.
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