UNIVERSAL – The beginning of summer brings the end of the school year, summer vacation, Father's Day, and the opening of local swimming pools. Furthermore, the summer solstice is the longest day of the year.

This year the sun will rise on June 20 at 5:22 a.m. and set at 8:35 p.m. for fourteen hours and fifty-three minutes of daylight.

But while the June solstice is the longest day of the year, this first day of summer is also the beginning of the fading of the light. Throughout the spring, from the winter solstice on, the days lengthen and nights get shorter. For many ancient pagan cultures, these six months of the year are when the God, who is associated with the sun, is dominant. From the summer solstice to the winter solstice, in the dark half of the year, the lengthening nights are said to be when the Goddess holds sway.

The Celtic pagan year is broken up into four quarters, with cross quarter holy days. This is known as the Wheel of the Year, within which the Sun God is seen as a Baby New Year who is born at the winter solstice after the sun wins a battle with the dark over the longest night of the year. That God is seen in both the strengthening sun, and in the growth of plants.

The next holy day in the wheel is Imbolc, or Candlemas, the day we now celebrate as Groundhog's Day. The child is young but growing. As the year progresses to the spring equinox, the Sun God becomes a young boy. By the Beltane or May Day celebrations, he is strong young man who plants seeds not only in the Earth, but in the Goddess, as well.

Finally, at the summer solstice the Sun God is at his zenith. But never fear, there is life still in the God. As the summer wears on the sun grows into an older, wiser God.

In the harvest celebrations that come throughout the rest of the year — Lammas, fall equinox, and Samhain or Halloween — the God is symbolically sacrificed in the form of wheat, and other grains, squash, and corn.

For three months, in the time from Halloween until the winter solstice, the Sun God seems to be dead but he is gestating and is born once again at the winter solstice when the Wheel of the Year starts again.

As for the Goddess... there are many stories, and many women who know them. Just as in the greater Hudson Valley, there are many who celebrate the solstices, both of them, as well as all equinoxes.

All are part of this world sprung forth around us all now.