Amassing Candles and Hogging Ground

[vovat]

Happy Candlemas, everybody! While this holiday (also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple to people who like their holidays to have long names) is really only celebrated by Anglicans/Episcopalians and Eastern Orthodox Christians nowadays, it was more significant in the Middle Ages. It is held forty days after Christmas, because, under the Mosaic law, it's forty days after childbirth that a Jewish woman undergoes ritual purification. The name Candlemas comes from the purification of candles that a priest would perform during the feast day. It was apparently also the traditional day for taking down Christmas decorations, which probably wouldn't go over so well in the modern United States.

Candlemas was also used in England as an indicator of future weather, sort of like St. Swithin's Day and other such days. Americans combined this idea with that of weather-forecasting animals to come up with Groundhog Day. So we come from the presentation of the baby Jesus to that of a rodent in just a few short steps. Isn't the evolution of holidays wonderful? {g}