Candlemas

The Presentation of the Lord; the Purification of Mary; the Meeting of the Lord

Her travel diary says the fortieth day after Epiphany is kept at Jerusalem with the highest honor: a procession in the Anastasis, the church of the Resurrection, sermons by the priests and then the bishop on the passage of Luke where Joseph and Mary bring the child into the temple, and the Eucharist. Forty days after January 6 is February 14. Because the feast was forty days after January 6, it shows that Jerusalem then kept the birth on that day. It had no name of its own. Her journey is usually dated c. 381-384; no exact year is known.

The fortieth day after the Epiphany is undoubtedly celebrated here with the very highest honour

He is said to have founded Candlemas to replace the pagan Lupercalia. The Catholic Encyclopedia says plainly that the feast was certainly not introduced by Gelasius to stop the excesses of the Lupercalia, and that the blessing of candles has nothing in common with the Lupercalia procession. Popular accounts also tie it to Imbolc, the Celtic festival at the start of February. A nearness of date is not a record that anyone set the feast to replace another, and no early source supports either claim. The feast came from Jerusalem’s count of forty days (H1).

The feast is introduced across the Eastern Empire, in thanksgiving for the end of a great plague at Constantinople. By then it was kept on February 2, forty days after December 25. The Greeks called it Hypapante, the meeting of the Lord with Simeon and Anna, and kept it as a feast of the Lord.

Introduces a procession at Rome for the day. The feast appears in a 7th-century manuscript of the Gelasian Sacramentary under the title the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary: in the West it was kept as a feast of Mary, in the East as a feast of the Lord. The Catholic Encyclopedia says the Eastern decree of Justinian may have prompted Rome to adopt it, but definite information is wanting.

The blessing of candles enters common use. The Catholic Encyclopedia says it did not come into common use before this century, and that it has nothing in common with the procession of the Lupercalia. Candles are not named in Luke.

The appendix to its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says no day but the Lord’s Day is commanded to be kept holy under the gospel, and that festival days are not to be continued. Days of public fasting or thanksgiving may still be called for special occasions. Strict Presbyterians who hold the regulative principle keep no Candlemas.

Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.

The first official Groundhog Day. The custom came with German immigrants from European weather lore, in which a sunny Candlemas meant another forty days of cold and snow. History.com says the day has roots in pre-Christian traditions and that Christians in certain parts of Europe held the Candlemas belief.

Institutes the World Day for Consecrated Life, to be kept with the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also called Candlemas, which recalls the coming of Christ, the Light of the World.

The feast follows Luke’s story. Leviticus 12 required a mother to be purified after bearing a son, and Luke joins this to the presenting of the firstborn to the Lord (S3). Jerusalem counted forty days from January 6, then its feast of the birth, and kept the fortieth day (H1). When the Eastern churches and Rome later fixed the birth on December 25, the feast moved to February 2 (H3).

The popular claim that Gelasius made Candlemas to replace the Lupercalia has no early source behind it (H2), and the Catholic Encyclopedia rejects it. The day began with the Gospel and a pilgrim’s calendar, not with a pagan feast.

Roman Catholics

Eastern Orthodox churches

Anglicans

Lutherans

Baptist and free-church Protestants

The Churches of Christ

Strict confessional Presbyterians

Those who keep no holidays on grounds of pagan origin

The blessing of candles and the procession

Catholic and some Anglican churches bless candles of beeswax and carry them in procession, as a sign of Simeon’s words about a “light” for the Gentiles. The blessing came into common use in the 11th century (H5).

The song of Simeon

Simeon’s words in Luke 2:29-32, the Nunc dimittis, are central to the day. The Orthodox sing it at every Vespers, and Western churches use it at Compline.

Churching of women

A blessing for a mother after childbirth, modeled on Mary’s purification. Catholics called it a pious custom and not a precept. Anglican Prayer Books made it a thanksgiving of women after childbirth, and the Episcopal Church in 1979 replaced it with a thanksgiving for a birth or adoption in which both parents take part.

Mexico’s Día de la Candelaria

Whoever found the baby-Jesus figure in the rosca de reyes on January 6 hosts a tamale meal on February 2. Families dress their figure of the Child in new clothes and take it to Mass (see Epiphany).

La Chandeleur in France

Crêpes are eaten on February 2. The round, golden shape is said to stand for the sun, and a cook flips a crêpe while holding a coin for luck. The story that Gelasius fed crêpes to pilgrims is unsourced.

Weather lore

European folk belief held that a sunny Candlemas meant forty more days of winter, and a Scottish rhyme says that if the day is dry and fair, half of winter is still to come.

Groundhog Day

The weather lore crossed the Atlantic with German immigrants, who watched for a badger and then a groundhog (H7). Today the day is a media event and a tourist draw, far from Luke’s story.

The church’s appointed remembrance is weekly, and it looks to the cross

The New Testament gives the church one day and one memorial: the first day, and the Supper that proclaims His death (S1, S2).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S1). The Lord Himself gave the memorial: “this do in remembrance of me,” and Paul says what it proclaims, “the Lord’s death till he come” (S2). That is the remembrance God appointed, on the day the apostles kept it. Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly feast to its worship.

The New Testament shows no church keeping Candlemas, and the record bears that out: the first sign of the feast is at Jerusalem in the late 4th century (H1), and the West kept it later still as a feast of Mary (H4).

Luke tells the presentation in full and sets no feast for it

The event is Scripture, told with the law’s own words; no apostle commands a yearly remembrance of it (S3, S4).

Luke tells that Mary and Joseph brought the child up to Jerusalem “to present him to the Lord,” and that the offering of the poor, a pair of birds, was made (S3). The event is plainly biblical. Simeon, a righteous man, took the child in his arms (S4), and the church should preach it, with Simeon’s words and Anna’s witness.

But the text speaks of purification under the law of Moses, which the church is not under, and it does not tell the church to remember the day each year. It mentions no candles. The light in Simeon’s song is a word for Christ Himself (S9). Preaching the presentation is given; a feast of it, with a rite of candles, is not.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves one believer free to regard a day and another free not to, and forbids each to judge the other (S5, S6).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S5). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian feast. It does give the rule for a Christian’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord, and no one may judge him for it.

So a Christian may read Luke 2 on February 2, and keep a family meal or thank God at home. What they may not do is make that day binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy day (A1). Paul’s word to the Colossians stands beside this: let no man judge you “in respect of a feast day” (S6).

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years.” Critics apply his alarm to church-made feasts like Candlemas.

The Galatians were taking up a calendar as a way to stand right with God (verses 4:21 and 5:4), and Paul fears his labor was in vain. Read in context, the text strikes at any day made necessary to please God, and it fits a feast imposed on the church as a duty. Scholars differ over whether the days were Jewish or pagan. The text does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a day, which Romans 14 allows (S5). The case against Candlemas in the church’s worship rests on the New Testament pattern (A1).

A feast or a churching rite of “purification” revives a ceremonial law that Christ fulfilled.

The point is sound for any rite that treats a mother as unclean, or that binds a ceremony of the law on the church. Luke reports what Mary and Joseph did under the law, as devout Jews, and does not command it to us (S3). But a church that holds a thanksgiving for a birth, with no claim of uncleanness, is not reviving Leviticus. The fault lies in binding the rite as worship, not in giving thanks (A1, A3).

Simeon calls Christ “a light for revelation to the Gentiles.” The candles of the feast show that light.

Simeon’s words are Scripture, and the church may sing them on any Lord’s Day. But Simeon speaks of Christ, not of candles, and the blessing of candles came in the 11th century (H5). A picture the church draws from a verse is not a rite the verse appoints.

The feast’s readings treat the presentation as the fulfillment of Malachi’s word that the Lord would suddenly come to His temple.

The prophecy is Scripture, and Luke’s story fits it. A church may read and preach it on any Lord’s Day. The text tells what God promised; it does not appoint a feast in which to read it.

Study

• Luke tells the presentation with the words of the law and the song of Simeon. Why might a story be Scripture and still not call for a yearly feast?
• The earliest record is a pilgrim’s diary of a feast forty days after January 6 (H1). What does it tell us about when the day came to be kept, and why on that date?
• Simeon calls Christ a light, and the church added candles eleven centuries later (H5). When does a picture drawn from a verse become a rite added to worship?
• Romans 14:5 says “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.” How can a family keep February 2 at home without making it a law for the church?
• Why does the claim that Gelasius made Candlemas from the Lupercalia fail (H2), and why does a bad argument against a feast not make the feast right?

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Epiphany

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