Swedish peoples thoughts of the origin of Midsummer

How can I celebrate Midsummer every year without knowing the origin of the celebration? It’s embarrassing. Another thought that came to my mind was if other Swedes felt the same way as I do? Do other Swedes know the origin of the Midsummer celebration or is it just something that we celebrate every year and doesn’t know the origin of? To see what the answer was, I asked a couple of Swedes why they believe we celebrate Midsummer and the responses I got was as follow.

Berit, 67 years old: “Don’t know, it’s just a tradition that I don’t know the history of.”

Lena, 44 years old: “We celebrate Midsummer to greet the summer. We basically want to celebrate so we can eat pickled hearing, take a schnapps and put up the Maypole.”

Mats, 45 years old: “The harvest season started and once again people got food and celebrated with a party. “