Candlemas

Dear Friends in Christ,

The Church calendar is a strange thing. While the rest of the world is celebrating Christmas, we are “wondering” our way through Advent. When we finally decide to celebrate Christmas, the rest of the world is putting everything away, and we barely have one, and very occasionally two Sundays to actually celebrate what is kind of a pivotal occasion of our faith - the birth of our Savior, before we are headed into Epiphany and removing all the flowers and candles and other decorations from our sanctuaries.

Except, if you’ve been paying attention, you will have noticed that at Saint Anna’s we haven’t taken down the creche, the nativity scene made so familiar by the stories we hear every year about the birth of Christ. If we took it down with the rest of the decorations, the magi would barely have had time to arrive at the manger before they were packed into a box where they would remain until the following year. And so, I made the executive decision to leave it up until Candlemas on February 2nd.

Candlemas, also known as the Feast of the Purification of the blessed Virgin Mary, falls exactly forty days after Christmas and was the official end of the Christmas season in Medieval England. It was celebrated as a great feast day, when the candles intended for use in churches over the coming year were blessed. There would often be candlelit processions in honor of the feast.

Here in the US February 2nd is best known as Groundhog Day, the day when, according to Pennsylvanian Dutch superstition, if a groundhog emerging from its den and seeing its shadow forecasts another six weeks of winter, but if he doesn’t see his shadow spring will arrive early. The tradition derives from German speaking areas where a badger is the forecasting animal. It is based on the lore that clear weather on Candlemas forebodes a long winter.

So tomorrow, as the rest of the world watches to see in Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not, I will be taking down my Christmas lights and packing away my nativity sets, and maybe blessing a few candles here and there! And come Sunday, there will be no creche in church!

Yours in Christ,

Jane+