Our First Candlemas

Yesterday we celebrated our first Candlemas. One of the major ways we have chosen to bring Waldorf principals into our home is by celebrating some of the festivals. I love how they add to the gentle rhythm of the year. At this point the celebrations are as much for DH and I as they are for W. He's just over a year old, and while he seems to enjoy the celebrations, most of it doesn't really mean too much to him yet. This year was our first experience with Candlemas and it was truly lovely. I wrote previously about our preparations for Candlemas.

I think they served us well. Yesterday, W watched while I made butter in a jar with marbles. It was fun, but my jar was too small and I didn't have an empty larger one so everything was transferred to a larger plastic food storage container and it worked beautifully. Lesson learned...for a pint of cream use a quart size jar. Talking to Grammy today, I was also told that I should have rinsed my butter in water to keep it from going rancid. I need to do some more research on that and think about it for next year. For the small amount of butter we made (it just filled one of my small ramekins) I'm not going to worry about it going rancid though. This was the best tasting, sweetest, yummiest butter I can ever remember eating! W and I also both really enjoyed the buttermilk too! We ate a little bit of the butter on some homemade bread as a snack and saved the rest for dinner.

W and I also worked on getting the living room and dining room of our home clean during the day. This was sort of the ceremonial beginning to our spring cleaning but was really mostly just a surface straightening up. W of course proceeded to pull all of his toys back out after that, so things didn't seem to be straightened up for very long.

While W ate his lunch I planted the forget-me-not and alpine strawberry seeds for our little nature table pots. W watched while he ate and was very interested in the whole process. I'm really looking forward to involving him with the garden this year. He loves to be outside and he loves plants. We come from a long line of gardeners and it is something I look forward to sharing with him as well.

For our dinner, I had not ground any wheat earlier and wanted to make whole wheat pancakes, so I decided on these blender pancakes. They were pretty good with lots of texture to them. I mixed up a double batch, but because I have problems turning pancakes (one skill I have been trying to master my whole life with no success) DH agreed to do the actual cooking of the pancakes and "ground hog" sausage. I was also happy that there were several breakfasts worth of pancakes left over to go into our freezer.

We placed our birthday ring with all 9 candles on an elevated plate and placed our heart candle in the middle.

When they were all lit and the lights were turned off they gave a beautiful glow to the room and plenty of light to read by. DH commented that if we light candles like that every night, we could greatly reduce our use of electricity. I of course love this idea! W seemed to be enchanted by the candle light too, repeating "See! See!" over and over.

While we gobbled pancakes, I told DH about the special things W and I had already done to celebrate Candlemas and talked about the symbolism of the different things we had done. We also read some Candlemas verses and DH sang a rousing and theatrical version of this groundhog song to the delight of W and myself. I also read from Luke 2:22-40 which tells of Jesus being presented at the temple and encountering Simeon and Anna. After that I read this charming little story about the Snowdrop which I chose to use instead of the story about St. Bridget, which I'll save till W is older.

We ended our meal with a discussion about the upcoming season of Lent and I have decided to give up soda for Lent this year.

Later in the evening, while DH was doing the bedtime routine with W, I spent some time reading The Postage Stamp Garden Book: Grow Tons of Vegetables in Small Places and planning my early cold season garden. I only have about a 4'X4' space to work with beside our back steps so this book gives me wonderful ideas about what and how much to plant there and how to get the most out of my little plot. This spring I plan to plant sugar snap peas, carrots, radishes, beets, lettuce and onions in my little plot!

As Candlemas is also a time for renewed creativity, I finished off the evening working on a handwork project. I am currently knitting up bunches of little cotton squares to use as family cloth. I'm sure sewing up some flannel would be a quicker process for this, but, I'm just more likely to get around to knitting some squares up, so that's what I am doing for now to get the ball rolling.

Preparing for Candlemas

Candlemas is celebrated on February 2nd and is the basis for our Groundhog's Day holiday in the United States. It is also the day after St. Bridget's Day/Imbolic. There is lots of wonderful information about the festival and its origins at School of The Seasons.

In preparation for the celebration, I started by making beeswax taper candles for us to burn in our birthday ring on the dining table. Our ring holds 9 candles and I made 12. One to try out as a sample and two to use for W's second birthday celebration next fall.

I had a blast making these and learned lots as this was my first attempt at candle-making as an adult. To be fair, it's not an entirely new concept to me since I used to help out in my aunt and uncle's candle shop a little bit when I was a kid visiting them. I have always really loved candle-making and I adore the smell and feel of beeswax. It may be my new addiction.

In addition I also wicked and poured beeswax into a heart shaped ramekin and made some cute little beeswax hearts to hang on the nature table tree. My plan is that we will put the heart candle inside our ring of light on the table.

Other preparations for our celebration included making St. Bridget's crosses from wheat straw according to these directions. I made one large one to hang on the wall and several smaller ones to hang on the nature table tree. I didn't have ready access to wheat straw from a local field so I bought wheat from the craft store's florist department to use after I cut the heads off. My one suggestion is to soak the straws in water before trying to bend them. Otherwise, they tend to snap in half.

As for food, which I consider an important part of any celebration, we will have pancakes, which are traditional on February 2nd to honor the sun. Along with this we will eat sausage which is a tradition from my family on Groundhog's Day because sausage is made from "ground hog". I know, it's kind of silly, but we have eaten sausage and some sort of pancake every year for Groundhog's Day for as long as I can remember. The other plan is to make butter to eat on the pancakes using these directions from The Magic Onions. From the research I did, this was traditionally a time for calving in Northern Europe and, which is why milk-based foods are often served as a part of the celebration too. Now I just have to remember to get the heavy cream for our butter once we dig our way out of all this snow.

Typically on festival days, our family's primary celebration is around the dinner table after Daddy gets home. We will repeat the verses that were used for circle time that morning, so that he gets to here them too, and I will try to tell a story, possibly based on this.

It also seems that Candlemas, in the Waldorf tradition is used as the first festival of Spring. After all, one of the verses we will say on the day is:

If Candlemas be fair & bright,

winter will have another flight.

If Candlemas be cloud & rain

inter will be gone, and not come again.

(I found this verse here)

To honor the coming Spring, we will plant these two little pots of seeds (forget-me-nots and Alpine Strawberries) that day on the nature table (and later move them to a sunny window). I am also hopeful that some other little early spring flowers or critters may join us on the nature table that day along with our snowflakes, winter greenery lantern and King Winter who are currently inhabiting the nature table.

I have to admit, in some ways it feels strange, but also wonderfully hopeful to be looking towards Spring when we just recently had about a foot of snow fall here.

Candlemas is also when we will start having discussions about what we will give up for Lent as well as starting our spring cleaning (actually we'll probably start the following day). It is also known as a time of creativity, so I will probably plan on some extra handwork for myself that day.