“If Candlemas be fine and clear there’ll be two winters in that year”

Before there was Groundhog Day there was Candlemas.
And before Candlemas there was Imbolc – the pagan festival of the coming of spring.

It seems there has always been a need to celebrate the coming of spring as soon after midwinter as possible. The date is supposedly midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox – not sure the maths quite works but perhaps it did before eight days were chopped out of the calendar in 1582.

But what is Candlemas? It’s the day on which churches used to bless all the candles for use during the year. Somehow it’s not the same blessing bottles of candle oil (and one tradition states that only beeswax candles should be blessed anyway). In the days when we used wax candles we did bless the whole year’s supply (candles burn better if they’re old so we always had at least that many in the building).

February 2nd is also The Presentation of Christ, being the day Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple, along with their offering of two doves or pigeons (Leviticus suggests a sheep but presumably they couldn’t afford that) and seems to be one of the oldest of the Christian festivals. After the Presentation, according to Luke, the family went back to Nazareth (not Egypt, as in Matthew).

Snowdrops were known as Candlemas bells and there was a superstition that they shouldn’t be brought into the house before Candlemas.

Candlemas was also the absolutely last day of Christmas – after that we start counting down to Lent and if you kept your decorations up any longer there were dire consequences:

Ceremony for Candlemas Eve
Down with rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith you dressed 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.

Ceremony for Candlemas Day
Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
till sunset let it burn;
Which quench’d, then lay it up again
Till Christmas next return.
Part must be kept wherewith to tend
The Christmas log next year.
And where ’tis safety kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.

End now the white-loaf and the pie,
And let all sports with Christmas die.

Robert Herrick

Note: We keep Candlemas/Presentation of Christ in the Temple on the nearest Sunday which this year is 31st January.