Nativity of St. John the Baptist

June 24 is the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, one of only three births (alongside Christ's and Mary's) kept as a feast in the Roman calendar. The dating is liturgical: six months before Christmas, exactly as Luke records the angel's promise to Zechariah in the Temple (Luke 1:13-24). The feast is older than the feast of John's martyrdom (August 29) and is attested in the West by the fifth century.

Tradition places John's birth at Ain Karim, in the hills west of Jerusalem, where the Church of the Visitation — built over the traditional house of Zechariah and Elizabeth — commemorates both the visit of Mary and the birth of the Baptist. The church's stone bears the Magnificat in forty-one languages, and the spring below the church is said to have flowed at John's birth.

The feast is kept as the summer Christmas: bonfires (fogueras in Spain, St. Jean in France, fuegos de San Juan in Latin America) are lit on the eve of the feast, the shortest night of the year. John's own words — "He must increase, I must decrease" (John 3:30) — are read at the liturgy, and the bonfires mark the turning of the sun from the longest day toward the shortest. From Jerusalem to Genoa, where the relics of the Baptist lie in the cathedral, the feast of June 24 lights the night.