This year, a few holidays fall into this weekend: Candlemas, St. Brigid’s day, Imbolc. Maybe they’re historically related, maybe they’re not—you’ll have to look into that for yourself. Today I’ll just be writing about our plans.
At some point in the past twenty years, I found out about Candlemas and the associated practice of eating crêpes (possibly because of their sun-like appearance?). That sounded good to us so we’ve been eating crêpes by candlelight every Candlemas for a few years now.
Over the past year though, Rachel and I have started making a more concerted effort to celebrate the quarter and cross-quarter days. The Wheel of the Year has historically been attuned to the seasons of the British Isles, so (like many others) we’ve been trying to focus our celebration on more local seasonal changes. Imbolc is generally regarded as a celebration of the first hints of Spring, and I believe we’ve found a couple of good ones.
First, the beginning of February is roughly the beginning of sugaring season around here, when the sap begins to run and maple syrup production begins. So I’m going to attempt maple candy today using some local maple syrup. (Maple candy AND crêpes in one day? That’s a lot of sugar.)
Secondly, Rachel is going to start a batch of seeds today, mostly for cool tolerant plants like leafy greens. She did this in February last year, so timing it with the holiday celebration seemed appropriate. She’s very excited about this. :)
We’ll still be eating crêpes by candlelight. This year we’ve added a nice candelabra we found at a flea market. Candles are from a local maker using semi-local beeswax. The candles will be burned all day today and possibly tomorrow.
Brigid/St. Brigid is not a large part of our celebration but Rachel did make a nice Brigid’s cross from horsetail growing in our little pond:
I’ve enjoyed revisiting this essay from Rhyd Wildermuth from last year at this time.
We’ll also have a fire out back at some point. (Any excuse will do.) Tomorrow’s weather is going to be especially nice, so we’ll also do a bit of outdoor spring cleaning, e.g., raking up sweetgum pods, straightening up the garage, cleaning up the area where we feed the birds.
It’s going to be a good weekend. Bring on Spring.