Scents and Sensibility - Newsletter - Volume 2 - Issue 1 - January 8, 2001

To all of you, who have helped to make 2000 so bright and clear, may you have a joyous and healthy New Year!

The Next Great Celebration - Candlemas!

Putting away the holiday lights and trappings can be a melancholy task. Reds and gold give way to the colors of every day life, the holiday music is put away, the furniture returned to its more serviceable position and we settle in to ride out the winter without the twinkling of colored lights, menorahs, Yule logs and mistletoe or other customs one uses to celebrate the season.

Still, the long, dormant winter is teeming with celebratory possibilities. One of our favorites is Candlemas, originally known as the Gaelic holiday, Là Fhèill Brìghde nan coinnlean, (The feast day of Brighde of the candles"). Candlemas is also known as Ground Hog's Day (US), Aztec New Year, Chinese New Year, La Fête de la Chandeleur, in France and Canada, Imbolc, Roman Lupercalia; Valentine's Day (US); Armenian Candlemas , and goodness knows how many other names. Brìghde, by the way, is Bridget of Kildare, the Celtic goddess of fire, the hearth, smithy, fields, poetry and childbirth. She also gives blessings to women who are about to marry, hence the name bride or bridget.

Bridget's Day or Candlemas was marked by the kindling of sacred fires to symbolize her relationship with the fire of birth or renewal, the fire of healing, fire of the forge and the fire of poetic inspiration. Chandlers particularly celebrated this sacred holiday as candles were traditionally blessed and burned to heal the sick and purify homes.

Today Candlemas is associated with weather forecasting. On the feast day, Bridget would visit and bless homes. If the sun was seen on this day winter was still to come but if the sun was hidden behind clouds winter was over.

In some countries it was believed that some type of burrowing animal, a hedgehog was popular, would come out on Bridget's Day to judge the quality of the weather. This tradition came with settlers to the New World but, alas no hedgehogs could be found, just groundhogs--in abundance. Thus Groundhogs' Day was born.

Valentines' Day gets tossed into this holiday salad as well. Vance Randolf, an Ozark folklorist, stated that  Groundhogs' Day used to be celebrated on February 14th. Candlemas was sometimes celebrated on its astrological date whereby the sun reaches 15 degrees Aquarius or about the 14th of February. There is some speculation that Valentine may have originated from the poor pronunciation by French peasants of the word 'galantine', or gallant, an amorous young man.

Whichever reason you choose to celebrate Candlemas, it is very much about candles. Traditionally, candles are set in the windows of a home and burn from evening until sunup to purify the home, the beginnings of spring cleaning. Most candles are scented with fragrance oils, not essential oils because essential oils burn as fuel and the therapeutic benefits are partially lost. For this reason I prefer beeswax candles, which have a lovely sweet scent all their own and prepare potpourris scented with antiseptic oils such as lemon and bergamot and all the woody scents such as pine, cedar, balsam and frankincense. Also place a few drops of oil in a small non flammable dish a few inches above your candles and the oils will release their scents, filling your home with their purifying aromas. If it be affairs of the heart that you celebrate, rose, neroli and jasmine are all known to be marvelous and subtle aphrodisiacs.