Also called Festas Juninas, Festa de São João, São João, simpatias de Santo Antônio, Trezena de Santo Antônio
Brazil's June festivals honour Saint Anthony (13 June), Saint John (24 June) and Saint Peter (29 June) with bonfires, quadrilha dances and country food. Around Saint Anthony's day, the matchmaking saint, people perform small folk charms called simpatias to find love or hurry a wedding.
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Take care: Treat the saint's image with respect: these simpatias come from popular Catholic devotion, so keep the playful custom kind and return the image upright or restore the Child afterwards. Light bonfires only where allowed and supervise them. Sky lantern balloons, once part of the June festivals, are an environmental crime in Brazil and should not be released.
A large bonfire is lit on Saint John's Eve, explained by the story that Elizabeth lit a fire on a hill to tell Mary that John the Baptist had been born. Couples who jump the embers together or walk around the fire are said to become godparents of the fire, a bond of friendship for life.
Uses: Bonfire
At midnight on 12 June a person stabs a knife into the trunk of a banana plant and leaves it overnight. In the morning the stain of the sap on the blade is read as the first letter of a future spouse's name.
Uses: Knife, Banana plant
The square dance at every festa centres on a mock country wedding with a bride, groom, priest and an angry father. It plays on the marriage theme of the season and on the fertility of the land.
Uses: Straw hats, Checked dresses
The Portuguese brought the June saints' festivals to Brazil during the colonial period, and they grew out of European midsummer customs such as bonfires and ribboned poles. In Brazil, where June is midwinter, they became rural harvest festivals for corn and rain, celebrated in a thatched arraial with forró music and quadrilha dances. Caruaru in Pernambuco claims the largest celebration, with about 1.5 million people in 2011.
Saint Anthony was born Fernando Martins de Bulhões in Lisbon and died near Padua on 13 June 1231. He is invoked to find lost things, and in Portugal, Spain and Brazil he is known as the marriage saint, from legends of him reconciling couples and helping poor women find dowries. Brazil keeps Dia dos Namorados, its Valentine's Day, on 12 June, the eve of his feast. The simpatias of turning his image or taking away the Christ Child are popular devotion, not Church teaching.
Peel an apple in one unbroken strip, throw it over your shoulder, and read the letter it makes on the floor as the initial of a future partner.
On Midsummer night Slavic villagers gathered healing herbs, floated flower wreaths on rivers, leapt over bonfires and searched the forest for the fern that blooms only at midnight. Herbs picked that night were dried and kept as protection all year.
The cluster of May Day customs that welcomed summer: raising a decorated maypole, Gaelic Beltane fires that cattle and people passed between for protection, and washing the face in dew on May morning for beauty and health.
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