I’m surprised that Cecil did not mention that the Summer Solstice was traditionally known as “Midsummer’s Day” for centuries in England. Evidently, at least in Shakespeare’s day, people were still bright enough to know that June 22 was not the beginning of summer.
Link to Cecil’s Column: Is it true the summer solstice starts on May 1 in Ireland? – CKDH
Back in the 50s and early 60s I seem to recall everyone considered that summer ran from Memorial Day (which was always then May 30th and not the fourth Monday in May) through Labor Day (which is the first Monday in September unless that’s Sept 1). So Summer ran from may 30th through September 2 (at the earliest) or Sept 8 (at the latest). This is pretty close to June through August.
Of course every school child knows that summer runs from the day after the last day at school through the day before the first school day in fall.
Just as a side note, the average temperature in Dublin is 18 degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit. I knew that sounded too damned cold.
Not 18 degrees, kes, 18 degrees variation. The average winter temp is 18 degrees cooler than summer.
Farenheit.
May 1st is the date of Beltane, an old Celtic holiday of fertility. It originally fell exactly between spring equinox and summer solstice, around May 7th, but it got bumped somewhere along the line.
Dogface, it’s customary (and helpful to others) to provide a link to the Column you’re discussing. Yeah, it may be obvious now when it’s on the front page, but by next week it’ll be buried in the Archives.
I have accordingly edited a link into your OP.
i never realised it was different…when does the summer usually start everywhere else then??
the seasons here are usually considered to go as
Feb1st to Apr31st Spring
May 1st to Jly 31st Summer
Aug 1st to Ot 31st Autumn (Fall)
Nov 1st to Jan 31st ** Winter**
And ummmmmm Cecil said it doesnt get cold?! yes it does!!! it gets reeeeeeeeeally cold 
So, Delly, in Ireland, it sounds like spring and summer are the seasons where it’s increasing in temp, but as soon as the temperature peaks and starts heading down, you call that autumn? Or does the temperature in Ireland peak well before August 1?
We 'merkins informally think of summer as the three hottest months, winter as the three coldest, and spring and autumn in between them.
Seasons are goofy here. “Officially” the first day of summer is solstice - June 21 or 22. But most Americans consider summer to be June, July, and August. So there’s automatically a discrepancy in thought right there. Also, depending on regions, the hottest time of the year can actually stretch into September. Winter has the same problem, “officially” the first day of winter is winter solstice (December 21), but most Americans consider winter as December, January, and February.
In Irish (Gaelic, as you American call it) September is Mi Mean Fomhair - literally, the month of the Middle of Autumn/Fall and October is Mi Deireadh Fomhair - The month of the end of Autumn. May is Bealtaine - the month of Beltan, the traditonal beginning of Summer. And the weather - if you don’t like it, hang on 5 minutes, it will change…
I was amazed to find that many Americans consider summer to start on Midsummer’s day - a self contradiction if ever I heard one.
The May-June-July “summer” makes summer be the period when the days are longest. That makes a lot of sense in the relatively high latitudes of the UK and Ireland. I visited Inverness, Scotland, in winter when sunrise was about 10:30am and sunset was 3:00pm. Ireland and Scotland also have a comparitively mild winter due to ocean currents and I think plant growth there depends largely on getting more light, so “spring” is when they get light (I was going to say sunlight, but I never saw the sun when I visited Scotland, and Cecil makes it sound like parts of Ireland rarely see it either)
The central and Eastern USA have a much colder continental winter and take much longer to warm up as the days lengthen. Plant growth there also needs the snow to mels and the temperature to rise, which presumably explain why Americans prefer the mid-summer’s day start to ‘summer’.
The Australian definition (and Cecil says it’s the meterologists’ one) is June-July-August as the season (actually our antipodean winter). This ends up being reasonably close to the temperature in Melbourne (perhaps a little early) and a good match to the usable light - our ‘daylight saving time’ starts a month before ‘summer’ and ends a month after it, although in Tasmania (at a higher latitude) they start ‘daylight saving time’ a month earlier, more like Ireland and the UK.
Spring increases in the temp after winter(obviously:p) and summer increases in temp but August(autumn) is one of the warmest months of the year for us…
In olden times, Scandinavians spoke of two seasons: Winter (October 14 - April 13) and Summer (April 14 - October 13). I’ve been told this is because the two-sided carved planks people used for calendars were turned over on those dates, but I think they’ve got it backwards. You turned the plank over because that’s when the seasons changed…
These days most of Scandinavia has four seasons, which start whenever they feel like starting. Winter starts when the snow comes and sticks around, and summer starts when even the little old ladies go out without jackets. The exception is the far north, which has only two seasons: the White Winter and the Green Winter 
Winter lasts from about the begining of December (though sometimes it’s the begining of November) to the end of april.
There’s still snow on the ground in some places…
I hate here.
And is midsummer’s considered the begining of summer because that’s about when kids get off for summer holidays perhaps?
I think that’s when we used to get, around then anyway.
-matthew
It all depends, I suppose, on whether you consider the temperature or the sunlight to be more significant. In Ireland, thanks to the Gulf Stream, temperatures don’t change much year-round, but due to the high latitude, the amount of sunlight varies greatly. So it makes sense for the Irish to judge seasons by sunlight, and put the solstice in the middle of summer.
Most parts of the U. S., though, see huge temperature differences, well over a hundred degrees Farenheit (50 or 60 Celcius) in many places. But the length of our days only change by about 2 or 3 hours. So we judge the seasons by temperature, and the time from, say, Beltan to Solstice is significantly cooler than the time from early August to Equinox. The hot season pretty much falls between June solstice and September equinox, so those are convenient dates to call the beginning and end of summer.
Alternately, you can also (for the same reasons of convenience) say that the boundaries are the national holidays Memorial Day and Labor Day (both computed by some complicated formula involving Mondays), but this has the two disadvantages that first, nobody else in the world knows what those days are (at least, what the American versions are), and there are no good corresponding national holidays to demark winter (most places, winter has already definitely arrived, by Christmas, but not really by Thanksgiving).
Well, as a kid in school here in Scotland, I was taught:
Spring: March-May
Summer: June-August
Autumn: Sep-Nov
Winter: Dec-Feb
I’d never heard of the seasons starting at any other dates here.
And DEAR GOD, were winters in Scotland depressing! The only daylight hours (between about 9.00am and 4.00pm) were spent in SCHOOL! Well, at least now I get paid for being indoors in the winter 
Even more confusingly, we’re (as of the 30th of March until 26th of October) now in the wonderful world known as British Summer Time, or Daylight Saving Time, giving us a bonus hour of daylight, and meaning that in the season of Spring, we’re in the hours of daylight. No, I don’t understand it either
It does mean though that it never really gets much darker than twilight at midnight for about a month and a half. Saves on the electricity bills…