How to Celebrate Candlemas

By eHow Holidays & Celebrations Editor

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While celebrating Groundhog Day on February 2, don't forget about Candlemas, which occurs on the same day. Falling between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, it represents the first dawning of spring, when animals start to venture from their dens.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

Beeswax Beeswax Sheets
Candle Wax
Candleholders
Candles
Paperwhite Narcissus Bulbs
Seeds
Candles
Seeds

Step1

Light all the candles you can get your hands on. Candlemas, like other winter holidays, is a festival of light. In fact, the day takes its name from the early Christian custom of blessing candles on February 2.

Step2

Make beeswax candles. It's a great project for a bleak winter day. The process is easy enough for children - you simply roll a sheet of beeswax around a wick - and the results are sophisticated enough to please the pickiest adult decorator.

Step3

Take down your Christmas greens if you haven't already. Burn them in the fireplace, compost them or use them as mulch.

Step4

Plant seeds outdoors, if it's warm enough; otherwise start some indoors for transplanting later. Or force a big bowl of paperwhite narcissus - their brightness and their sweet scent will help the rest of the winter go faster.

Step5

Hold a Candlemas party and serve the day's traditional grain-based foods, including crepes and pancakes.

Step6

Start something. Candlemas is a time of new beginnings, so this is the day to launch those piano lessons you've been meaning to take, to welcome a new puppy to the family, or to make those New Year's resolutions you didn't get to on January 1.

Tips & Warnings

Candlemas grew out of the ancient pagan celebration of Imbolc. It's a day for planting seeds, for lighting sacred fires, and for awakening the spirit.

Comments

ebarre said

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on 1/22/2008 Originally Candlemas was a a pagan festival. Romans celebrated Lupercus (fertility and herd god) around Feb 15th. The Celts celebrated Imbolc the 1st of February. This ritual in homage of goddess Brigid was to celebrate the purification and fertility coming out of winter. Peasants carried torches and had procession across fields praying to the goddess to purify the fields before seeding.
In the 5th century Pope Gelase 1st associated this pagan festival of the candles with the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple and the purification of the Virgin Mary.
It is not before 1372 that this celebration is officially associated with the purification of the Virgin.

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on 2/23/2006 According to the Encarta Dictionary:
Candlemas is a Christian feast held on February 2, commemorating the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of the infant Jesus Christ in the Temple.