by Carol H. Morgan

Created on: May 11, 2010   Last Updated: August 05, 2010

Most cultures celebrate at four distinct times per year: mid-winter, fall, spring and mid-summer.  And often holidays, as different  as most traditions, from religious to pagan to civic, are absorbed into one event. An example is the ancient Celtic way the area of Cornwall in the UK celebrates midsummer.  Similar to Easter, Christmas and Halloween, the local Golowan period is a combination of celebrations that have both pagan and Christian roots.  The Cornish holiday of Golowan (Cornish for the feast of St. John, which is more evident in the full form of the word, "Gol-Jowan") is a three-day long celebration incorporating elements which hail back to the feast of St. John and traditions of the Druids, among other mid-summer rituals.

The ancient area of Cornwall is one of the Celtic strongholds that remained after modern peoples settled the island and pushed the Celts to the north, west and south. The Cornish language, having similarities to Welsh and other Gaelic tongues, is one of the relics of this older culture.  There are also more ancient traditions preserved in this out-of-the-way southern tip of the English mainland. Victorian society in the nineteenth century tended to clean up and standardize older medieval and pagan holidays, as it did most notably with Christmas, but in remoter areas such as Cornwall older traditions have remained alive and intact.

Among the Christian elements of the holiday's origins, often celebrated in segments or stages, is the Feast of St. John, falling on the 24th of June.  The biblical story indicates that John the Baptist was born six months before Jesus Christ.  So while Christ was NOT likely actually born in late December, St. John's birth is indexed to late June anyway.  And as in many ancient Christian holidays such as the feast of St, John, much of the celebration and revelry is typically enjoyed the night before or the 'eve' of the holiday.

As to parts of the Christian activities that mark the celebrations, they often include progress to the nearby Cornish shores to act out the ritual that John the Baptist was most famous for: baptismal immersion in water.  Some instantiations of the feast include medieval-style morality plays including most particularly the visitation by the angel that told Mary she was to conceive the Christ child, causing Elizabeth's child (John the Baptist) to leap in the womb.

This particular date also

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