Author Archives: John Cutrone

Feb 02 2018
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Candlemas, St. Blaise's Day

Light Every Lamp

Throughout Mexico tonight, the dinner table will, for many, include tamales and hot chocolate, while in many parts of Europe, crepes will be on the menu. And at sunset, we’ll light every lamp in the house. It’s Candlemas. We are emerging from the darkness of Yuletide as the seasonal round of the year shifts from winter toward spring.

Candlemas is the day of blessing of candles in the Church, forty days past Christmas, with great processions of candles lit and born aloft, a light for the world. It is known as well as Purification Day, which comes out of an old Jewish tradition: forty days after the birth of a son, mothers would go to the temple to be purified. You might think of it as renewal, fitting for this time of year, the approach to spring. Not without coincidence, it was just yesterday, as Imbolc began, that the earth goddess was renewed as well, as our planet is now halfway on its yearly journey between the solstice of midwinter and the equinox of spring. And so the story goes that Mary went to the temple to be purified, carrying her newborn son, and it was there that she met the elders Anna and Simeon. Simeon recognized the child immediately as the light of the world, and this is the basis for the blessing of candles on this day, and the day’s lovely name.

One of the most beautiful and elaborate Candlemas celebrations is in the city of Puno in Peru. The photo above is of the Candlemas celebration there two years ago. The celebration in Puno and many other places in Peru, Bolivia, and other parts of South America will continue on for the better part of two weeks.

Candlemas is perhaps the most well known weather marker of the year: Here in the US, Candlemas isn’t much on our radar, but we do know the day as Groundhog Day. If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow as he crawls up out of his burrow, it’ll mean 40 days more of winter; if he sees no shadow, then it will be an early spring. This weather lore comes out of much older weather marking traditions related to the Second of February, but which all seem to offer the same wisdom––that a bright and sunny Candlemas Day means a longer winter, while a dark and cloudy one means welcome warmth will soon be on its way:

If the sun shines bright on Candlemas Day,
The half of the winter’s not yet away.

Tomorrow, the 3rd of February, brings St. Blaise’s Day. St. Blaise protects against maladies of the throat. On his feast day, priests will bless each member of their congregation by invoking a prayer to St. Blaise while holding two unlit candles in one hand about the neck of each person receiving the blessing… surely related to Candlemas, too. My mom and dad got married at St. Blaise Church in Brooklyn in 1949. It was my grandparents’ neighborhood parish, a small church. And so we have some fondness for St. Blaise. Ah, but that is tomorrow. Today, though, when we awake, we’ll see what that old groundhog says about winter this year. We shall see what we shall see, and it will be what it will be. The weather is beyond our control. But we can, at sunset, run about the house and light every lamp, for a few minutes at least, and illuminate our world.

 

Image: Candlemas at Puno, Peru by Pavel Špindler, 2016 [Creative Commons], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Feb 01 2018
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Imbolc, St. Brigid's Day

The Bridge

No matter what happens in our lives––times of sadness, times of joy––our planet continues to do what it does: spin on its axis and orbit the sun. These are the celestial mechanics of a universe ruled by gravity. The spinning causes our passing days and nights and the orbiting, our seasons, and today, thanks to that constant progression around the sun, we find ourselves just about midway between the midwinter solstice of December and the spring equinox of March.

As a halfway point in the seasonal round it is known as a cross-quarter day, one that in Celtic tradition is called Imbolc: the start, in traditional reckoning of time, of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The Church gave the day to St. Brigid, or St. Brigit, but me, I like the Brigid version because it looks more like “bridge,” which is what Brigid does: she bridges us from one perspective to the next, from winter to spring’s first stirrings. It will, for sure, be a long while before winter loses its grip, but Brigid gives us the assurance that it will happen, for nothing stays the same in the Earth’s daily migration along its path. Winter will give way to spring, spring to summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to spring again. “The only thing that stays the same is change,” say the Waterboys in an old song of theirs, and they are right.

It is traditional for St. Brigid’s Day to fashion a St. Brigid’s Cross out of rushes or reeds (this is what you see in today’s photograph, above), as well as to leave an oat cake and butter on a windowsill in your home. This, to encourage Brigid to visit your home and bless all who live there. Brigid bridges us also to Candlemas, which comes tomorrow, and tonight, being Candlemas Eve, marks the true and official end of the Christmas season. If there still remain vestiges of yuletide greenery in your home, this is the night to remove them. And so tonight return to nature what is hers––the rosemary, bays, mistletoe, holly, ivy, all––if for no other reason than that soon enough, the earth itself will once again be erupting in green.

Image: St. Brigid’s Cross by Liscannorman [Creative Commons], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jan 29 2018
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Candlemas, Christmas, Yule

Approach to Candlemas

January is waning, and with it, so is Yuletide in its full breadth. Most of us have packed away the Christmas things long ago, but there is an old old tradition that keeps the season going until the First of February, which is Candlemas Eve. Here in our house we have subscribed to this tradition this year, mainly because our tree has been so lovely and fresh, still, even in this late hour of midwinter. Perhaps also because Haden the Convivio Shop Cat loves sleeping beneath its boughs, and we enjoy the serenity of watching her sleep there.

Candlemas traditionally marks the end of the Christmas season in the Church, and even in homes, it is on Candlemas Eve that all vestiges of the Yuletide celebration are to be removed, as we shift from one seasonal perspective (winter) to another: the first stirrings of spring.

If you can’t imagine living with plastic snowmen and sparkly ornaments so far into the new year, keep in mind that in earlier times (well into the 20th century), Christmas decorations consisted of things of the natural world: holly and ivy, balsam and mistletoe, rosemary and other greenery. And in times past the decorations went up on Christmas Eve, not earlier. So it was pretty easy to live with these festive things in your home through to the Eve of Candlemas, and they certainly brought as much joy to a home as any of our contemporary decorations do now. While the major festivities of Christmas ended with Epiphany, the spirit of the season remained and lingered and kept folks company for these forty wintry days. But it was considered bad luck to keep these things about the house any longer than Candlemas. Our old reliable 17th century Book of Days poet Robert Herrick describes the significance of the day in his poem “Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve”:

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe ;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas Hall :
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind :
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected, there (maids, trust to me)
So many goblins you shall see.

The shift in our celebration of Christmas will probably always perplex me. How we took a celebration that traditionally begins on the solstice and runs through Candlemas and made it into a fourth quarter corporate event that begins in stores in September and makes people weary of its presence by Christmas Day is, I think, a great disservice to us all. In our home we follow the old ways as closely as we can. We may seem out of step with the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is not necessarily where we want to be, anyway. Home is a refuge for us and for sacred ceremony, and we rather like it that way. And so with Candlemas we will say farewell to the tree and to the wreath of bay upon the door. We’ll pack up the ornaments, and the tree will be returned to nature, laid to rest in a quiet corner of the garden. Next winter, at the solstice, we’ll use that same tree, dried over the course of the year, to fuel our solstice fire. And with Candlemas, we’ll shift our view from one of winter to one where the renewal of spring is close at hand.

 

Image: “Le Jeune Chanteur” by Trophime Bigot, who is known also as the Candlelight Master. Oil on canvas, 1650 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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