Celts usher in summer

Jerry Young holds Celtic flags at sunset Wednesday night at a summer solstice celebration by the Friends of the Celts. A fire that represents the sun was lit as the sun set on the longest day of the year. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

Druid John Lewis Taylor lights a fire that represents the sun during a Summer Solstice celebration ceremony Wednesday night. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/ Independent]

GALLUP — Wednesday marked an important day if you pay attention to the calendar, but only a few people in Gallup took time out to officially observe it with a Druid ceremony.

Yesterday marked the summer solstice that day that comes only once a year when the daylight is the longest and the night time is the shortest.

To celebrate the event, the Friends of the Celts here in Gallup had a ceremony at the home of Martin Link who is of Welsh ancestry as they have for the past five years. Some participants got into the spirit by wearing Celtic garb and carrying swords, just as their ancestors did some 2,000 years ago when the Druids or priests first began practicing the ceremony.

This year's celebration was pretty quiet not one policeman showed up looking to see if anyone had died.

That happened three years ago, said Link, when someone in his neighbor called the police after hearing someone yelling "I'm dying" in a loud voice.

The voice, of course, was one of the participants in the ceremony which includes a scene from Shakespeare's "Midsummer Nights Dream."

"We didn't know anything was going on, but apparently police were cruising up and down the neighborhood trying to hear if someone needed help," Link said.

This year, Link joked, the line was changed to "I'm dead," to avoid the problem.

About 20 people showed up this year, which is normal.

And just to clear up any questions, there were no sacrifices of any kind this year or any year that the Gallup residents have performed the ceremony.

"There's some debate on whether the Druids even did any sacrifices," said Link, adding that the group has debated the issue off and on and has come down on the side of no sacrifices, either real or imaginary.

He pointed out that the Druids would probably have a hard time getting people to agree to be sacrificed and the populations were so small then that they really couldn't afford to lose anyone in that way.

"If there was a sacrifice, it was probably a sheep or a goat," Link said.

Most of the people who attended the ceremony, which began about 8 p.m. and ended at 8:31 p.m., the official time of nightfall, had some Celtic ancestry of one kind or another.

But not Betsy Windisch, one of the co-founders of the Friends of the Celts organization.

She belongs, she said, because she believes in the spirit of the Celts which, in many ways, has close connections to the beliefs of groups like Native Americans and Blacks.