On the night of June 23 at 00:00 every year the “night of San Juan” is celebrated and thousands of bonfires adorn this night in many parts of the world . The origin of this tradition is pagan -and much older than its Christian celebration- and was based on the commemoration of the arrival of the longest day of the year, with the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, with great roots in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Finland or Denmark. In Latin America, in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Puerto Rico or Venezuela, the night of San Juan is also associated with ancient traditions and legends.
To commemorate the longest day of the year , the traditional thing was to light bonfires to purify the Sun and give it strength since from that day on, every day would get shorter (or weaker) until reaching the next solstice, the solstice of winter with the arrival of the shortest night of the year.
Once Christianity was born, many pagan traditions were absorbed into the Christian calendar and the commemoration of the longest night of the year was associated with a purely Christian event: the birth of Saint John the Baptist which, according to the Bible, took place on the 24th of June.
As a curiosity, it is the only saint for whom a festival is celebrated on the day of his birth, since the usual thing is to celebrate the anniversary of their deaths or the transfer of their relics.
