Light a candle; spring is coming
by Eleanor Parker, UnHerd:
By early February, Christmas can feel like a distant memory. This year especially, with no end to lockdown in sight, cold grey January seemed to go on forever. Here and there you might have seen houses with their Christmas lights still up — and right now, who can blame them for seeking a little extra light in the darkness? In fact, people who are still holding on to Christmas are following an ancient custom. The traditional end of the festive season isn’t until Candlemas, today, on February 2 — the last feast of Christmastide and the first feast of spring.
Many people are used to a Christmas season which begins around the start of December and, if you are lucky, lasts until early January. But this is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the Middle Ages, and for centuries afterwards, most celebrations were concentrated within the Twelve Days of Christmas — December 25 to January 6 — but celebrations continued throughout the whole of January. Short days and bad weather limited the work that could be done anyway, and the general gloom made festivity all the more welcome — much more cheerful than Dry January.
Candlemas, 40 days after Christmas, was the time to at last take down the decorations, “down with the rosemary and bays, down with the mistletoe”, as the 17th century poet Robert Herrick writes in ‘Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve’. But it was also a time to celebrate a festival of light and hope. The feast commemorates an event from Christ’s early childhood, narrated in the Gospel of Luke. As the firstborn son of his mother, Jesus was taken by his parents to be presented in the Temple in Jerusalem, in accordance with Jewish law.
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