It has been said that "we Latvians have a multitude of poets". Well, the same goes for all sorts of feasts and celebrations ― festivities so ancient we have all but forgotten their origins. That said, Latvians still persist in observing these occasions..

The most magnificent of these festivities is Midsummer’s Night that we have been celebrating annually for thousands of years. Quite frequently it is raining on the night of June 23 all over Latvia. That doesn't keep us from leaving our modern homes for the countryside. Once the Sun has set we light a bonfire and keep it ablaze till dawn so the Sun would see that we have not lost a communion with nature. To stay awake during the shortest night of the year we sing till we grow hoarse and dance till our shoes wear out. We may have forgotten the symbolic meaning of the celebration and yet we seem to respond to some primeval voice. Women, the guardians of fertility, , adorn themselves with wreaths of wildflowers, men make theirs out of oak leaves. Midsummer’s Night is a pagan holiday and yet even Christians among us celebrate it. Foreigners tend to join the gatherings thinking they will be allowed to remain detached observers. Little do they know: even an EU official may stumble right into the clutches of some maiden who's dabbling in witchcraft and ― surprise! ― suddenly remember that he is flesh and blood in the course of this wild night.

We also honour the Sun on the longest night of the year, December 21. It is Yuletide, the winter solstice. Astronomically the Sun is closest to the Earth on that day. We dress up in carnival outfits and masks, go outside in the snow and make bonfires to symbolically burn all that is bad. It is the night when the Sun starts on its way towards spring and so do we. The days grow longer. In a good year, only about one hundred of the 365 days are likely to be sunny.

Our folklore experts have singled out the celebrations of spring and autumn equinoxes. At Easter, usually around March 21, we follow Christ's Way of the Cross and celebrate His Resurrection but still don’t miss out on swings and egg-fights. There are many pagan traces in our church rites. On September 29, Michaelmas, day and night are the same length, and that’s when we hold a harvest festival. And we also celebrate name days. If you happen to open our calendar, you'll see we have to call on someone every day to wish many happy returns with flowers and chocolates.