June is bustin’ out all over!
That show-stopping Rodgers and Hammerstein number (from Carousel, 1945) is only one of numerous songs that ring in what might be everybody’s favorite month. Weather-wise, you’re pretty sure you won’t get frost, but the hot hot HOT summer weather hasn’t hit yet. The grass and the trees are green, and flowers are bright. Evenings are mostly pleasant, and the big thunderstorms still lie in the future. Birds are raising their young. Fireflies sparkle the night.
The movie musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers includes the number “June Bride,” for June is the traditional month for weddings – partly because of the weather, but party because many people used to marry immediately after finishing school. “Honeymoon, keep a-shinin’ in June,” by the light of the silvery moon.
June’s weather is so reliably good that Great Britain celebrates Queen Elizabeth’s birthday in June, even though she’s actually born in far-tetchier April.
On the other hand, June 1 also opens the Atlantic hurricane season. The worst storms usually come later in the summer, but fifty years ago, on June 23, 1972, Hurricane Agnes struck murderously, leaving 50 people dead in Pennsylvania and 19 right here in Steuben County.
The so-called People’s Liberation Army massacred pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. The Stonewall Riots took place twenty Junes earlier, ushering in a new age in which homosexuality finally dared to speak its name.
D-Day, the American-British-Canadian invasion of Nazi-ruled France, took place on June 6, 1944. Which reminds us that June is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Month.
June starts out with Regents exams, and ends with high school graduation, that inerasable dividing line in our lives – exciting, gratifying, and scary all at once.
With Memorial Day in the week before June starts, and Independence Day right after it ends, June has been a quiet month for official holidays – Flag Day and Father’s Day are greeted more with politeness than with excitement. But last year President Joe Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth a national holiday to celebrate the death of American slavery. The Confederate army west of the Mississippi (mostly in Texas) didn’t get around to surrendering until June 2, 1865, almost two months after most of the other armies. News of Emancipation then trickled out through Texas, reaching various locations on various days, to free the last people liberated by the Civil War.
Midsummer’s Day comes in late June. It’s the summer solstice, the longest daylight period of the year here above the equator. Even though our world still warms, the light begins to shrink, back toward the darkest day of December. “On a midsummer night,” wrote Sara Teasdale, “I was fed with the honey of fragrance, I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet.”
If that’s the first day of summer, why’s it called MIDsummer? In olden times people only referred to two seasons, each six months long. The solstice fell smack in the middle of “summer.” It was long considered a magical time. Shakespeare wrote of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The story of “The Princess on the Glass Hill” takes place at midsummer. (The TV series Midsomer Murders is about a fictional region of England, but plays on the word suggesting a time when magic and reality merge.)
Even though June’s been shy of major celebrations until Juneteenth came to the fore, it offers up the official day, week, or month for Donuts, Fudge, Peanut Butter Cookies, Ice Cream Sodas, Vanilla Milkshakes, Peaches and Cream, and Chocolate Pudding! So one way or another, you should find SOMETHING you like about June!