Category Archives: Candlemas

Feb 03 2015
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Book of Days Calendar, Candlemas, St. Blaise's Day

Your February Book of Days

NaturalHeart

The Third of February brings St. Blaise’s Day, and, as our gift to you, your printable Convivio Book of Days Calendar for February 2015. The calendar is a good companion to the blog, and it’s typically at the Convivio Bookworks website on the First of each month, whether I remember to tell you or not. Sometimes the remembering takes me a few days, as it did this month.

As for St. Blaise, he is the saint one would call upon for maladies of the throat. Visit a church today and you will likely find the clergy bestowing blessings upon the congregation, one throat at a time, using two crossed candles, one on either side of the neck. This, as a result of St. Blaise once healing a young boy who was choking on a fish bone. The candles used in the blessing could very well be linked to the candles that were blessed just yesterday at Candlemas (or maybe they are meant to evoke super sized fish bones).

My partner Seth had his throat blessed one St. Blaise’s Day by Father Brice, and the next day he woke up with a sore throat. Coincidence? Perhaps. All the same, Seth has avoided throat blessings since that fateful Third of February. Truth be told, the St. Blaise’s throat blessing is one of the more bizarre traditions of the Catholic Church, and probably a bit too “magical” for more straight laced church goers, like, perhaps, Presbyterians. Nothing at all against Presbyterians, mind you. I just imagine there might be a good deal of frowning upon throat blessings with crossed candles in this case. And then again, maybe I am wrong. There is an old custom of lighting bonfires on St. Blaise’s Night in Scotland, that great bastion of Presbyterianism, so there may very well be some throat blessings going on there, too, at least among those who like things a little quirkier. And that’s one thing I love about St. Blaise’s Day: it is an annual reminder that strange things sometimes still happen.

 

Feb 02 2015
Candlemas, Christmas, Imbolc

The Dewdrops of Mercy Shine Bright

Marianne_Stokes_Candlemas_Day

Imbolc on the First of February begins the stirring of the earth from its long winter’s sleep, and from the earth, on this Second day of February, emerges the groundhog as weather forecaster. The daylight hours of this day brings, of course, Groundhog Day, one of the few traditional weather markers we still know well. If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow as he crawls up out of his burrow this morning (he did, by the way), there will be still forty days more of winter. No shadow? An early spring. This relates to centuries-old weather lore, like this:

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

And yes, today is Candlemas, the day of blessing of candles in the Church, forty days past Christmas. It is also known 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. 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: Candlemas.

Candlemas is for many the true close to the Christmas season. One of the finest songs for this day and for those who follow these ways is the old hymn “Jesus, the Light of the World.” Tradition would have us light every lamp in the house at sunset, even for just a few moments. You might follow that with a meal of crepes (a European tradition) or tamales and hot chocolate (a Mexican tradition).

 

Image: Candlemas Day by Marianne Stokes. Tempera on panel, 1901 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. 

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Feb 01 2015
Candlemas, Christmas, Imbolc

Approach to Spring

St_Brigids_Cross

Come February, we are thoroughly along in our journey away from winter, toward spring. The thermometer may not be giving a clear indication of it, but we are now about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Sunlight has been increasing each day here in the Northern Hemisphere since the 21st of December. In another six weeks, night and day will once again be nearly balanced.

These halfway points are cross-quarter days, and this one, in the old Celtic calendar, is Imbolc, derived from the word Oimelc, Gaelic for ewe’s milk, for as the milk begins to flow for newborn lambs at this time of year, so soon will frozen streams and rivers begin to melt and flow, and so soon will green––and warmth––return. We are on the approach to spring.

The Church gave the day to St. Brigid, or Brigit… a bridge from winter to spring. Brigid is more proper, as is the more Celtic pronunciation of her name (brigg-id or bree-id) and she is sacred to Ireland, second there only to St. Patrick in stature. It is traditional on this day to fashion a St. Brigid’s Cross out of rushes or reeds, 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. She 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 it. And so tonight return to nature what is hers––the rosemary, bays, mistletoe, holly, ivy, all––if for no other reason than that soon, the earth itself will be erupting in green.

 

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

 

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