Candlemas: A Gardener’s Guide to Winter’s Midpoint
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
February 2, 2021
On this day, dear gardeners, we find ourselves at the cusp of a most intriguing celebration - Candlemas.
A day that, much like the delicate unfurling of a spring bud, marks the quickening of the year.
While in our modern parlance we might declare ourselves halfway betwixt Christmas and the verdant embrace of spring, this Celtic tradition honored a far more celestial midpoint.
It stood proudly between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, a forerunner to our beloved Groundhog Day.
Both, you see, shared a common purpose: to divine when winter's icy grip would at last release our eager gardens.
It is for this very reason that Candlemas has inspired such a delightful array of verses.
Allow me to share a few with you:
If Candlemas Day be mild and gay
Go saddle your horses, and buy them hay
But if Candlemas Day be stormy and black,
It carries the winter away on its back.
If Candlemas be fair and clear,
there'll be two winters in the year.
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight.
If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain,
Then Winter will not come again
Now, let us turn our attention to matters of the garden. In medieval times, one was permitted to leave their Christmas greenery in place until Candlemas - but not a day longer, mind you!
It was on this day that such festive adornments must be banished from sight.
In England, the humble snowdrop graces us with its presence in February, a fact reflected in its charming monikers "Fair Maid of February" and "Candlemas Bells."
This delicate bloom has inspired its own verse:
The snowdrop, in purest white array,
First rears it head on Candlemas Day.
One would be wise to resist the temptation to bring cut snowdrops into one's home before Candlemas, for such an act was considered a harbinger of ill fortune.
But let us not underestimate these seemingly fragile flowers!
They possess a natural antifreeze, a clever adaptation that allows them to weather the harshest of winter's tempers.
Across the centuries and the continent, the prognostications of Candlemas have taken on various forms.
In France and England, it was the bear who foretold the coming of spring, while the Germans looked to the badger for such portents.
When German immigrants arrived in Pennsylvania, they found themselves bereft of badgers but abundant in groundhogs - creatures far more amenable to capture and consultation.
It was on this very day in 1887 that the first Groundhog Day was celebrated in Gobbler's Knob, Pennsylvania.
A tradition that has since blossomed into the grand spectacle we witness today in Punxsutawney, with the esteemed Punxsutawney Phil as its crowning glory.
Might I suggest, dear gardeners, that you mark this Candlemas in your own way?
Perhaps by lighting a candle in your garden this evening, extending a warm invitation to spring and sunshine to once again grace your life and your beloved plots.
After all, is not the act of gardening itself a constant dialogue with the seasons, a beautiful dance between patience and anticipation?
