Today is Candlemas.  This is the day when the church remembers the Presentation in the Temple – the day that Mary and Joseph went to the Temple to give thanks for their new born baby boy – something that is echoed in modern day dedication ceremonies and baptisms.

But the Presentation was also a “purification ritual”, which involved sacrificing an animal or – for those who were less wealthy – some small birds.  Some people believe that it was a ritual purification for Mary after going through childbirth, as there was a bit of a thing back then about blood and ritual purity.  THis may sound extremely archaic, but – staggering though it may seem – in England we continued to have a “churching” ceremony for women right into the mid-twentieth century, and although if you read the words of the churching ceremony they could seem merely to be thanking God for bringing the woman safely through childbirth, culturally it become understood that a woman was “impure” after childburth. Thank goodness we’ve left that old skeleton behind.

Anyway. Back to Candlemas.  The Presentation in the Temple was, like many Christian feasts,superimposed over an eariler pagan festival – in this case the midpoint of winter, halfway between the shortest day of the year and the spring equinox. In pre-Christian times, it was called the Feast of Lights, and was a celebration of the gradually increasing daylight as winter began to recede.

Once the Church took the festival over, they made the 2nd February the day when all the candles that were to be used in the CHurch throughout the coming year were brought in to be blessed in a special feast (or “Mass”) of the Candles – hence, Candlemas.  This was in the days before gas or electric lighting, and candles not only provided light but also had  superstitious meanings. Candlelight was thought to protect against plague, illness and famine, and even scare away evil spirits.  A candle which dripped on one side when carried in church on Candlemas was regarded as a prophecy of the death of a loved one. It was also considered unlucky to bring snowdrops into the house before Candlemas – this too represented a death, or a farewell. Another superstition was that if any Christmas decorations were not taken down by Twelfth Night (January 5th), they should be left till Candlemas and then taken down.

For Christians, the candles had a symbolic significance. Marking the end of the “Epiphany”, candlemas recalled the Messianic prophecies often heard at Christmas – “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light (Isaiah 9:2) – and celebrated once again the coming of Jesus as the light in the darkness, a guiding light, and an expression of God among us.