Tag: Candlemas

Bidding Christmas Goodbye: Two Carols (One Sung, One Recited) for Candlemas Eve

Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

Whereas in our present age it’s common for families to take down their Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night (January 5) or Epiphany (January 6)—and many American Christians do so even sooner—in medieval Europe they typically stayed up through Candlemas on February 2, or were removed the evening before. Yes, Christmas was celebrated for forty days in the Middle Ages! Why that span? Because forty days after his birth, the infant Christ was presented in the temple according to Jewish custom and inspired the famous song of Simeon about finally getting to see God’s salvation and glory. The feast of Candlemas commemorates this event each year, which many medieval worshipping communities regarded as the bookend of the Christmas season.

In her book Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year, Eleanor Parker notes that Candlemas is the last feast of winter and the first feast of spring—a transitional festival that looks back to Christmas and forward to Easter (86). The date coincides with a significant point in the solar year: midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Read more in an UnHerd article by Parker, “Light a candle; spring is coming.”

So as we celebrate Candlemas this Friday, we bid farewell to Christmas and prepare to welcome Lent. The Chorus of Westerly models a respectful send-off in a video they released in January 2021, combining a choral performance of the “Candlemas Eve Carol” with a recitation by James Lawson of “Now Have Good Day”—both texts from early modern England.

The text of the first carol, originally published with the title “Ceremonies for Candlemasse Eve,” is by the poet-priest Robert Herrick (1591–1674), and the tune is traditional, collected from an old church gallery book; the two appear together in The English Carol Book (Second Series) (1923), edited by Martin Shaw and Percy Dearmer. The Chorus of Westerly sings the first two stanzas and refrain:

Down with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the mistletoe;
Instead of holly, now upraise
The greener box (for show).

The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer
Until the dancing Easter day,
Or Easter’s eve appear.

Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.

Herrick describes the English family tradition of taking down the Christmas greens—rosemary, bay, mistletoe, holly—on Candlemas Eve, replacing them with boxwood, which would stay up for the duration of Lent.

Burning the Christmas Greens
“Burning the Christmas Greens,” uncredited illustration from the January 29, 1876, edition of Harper’s Weekly

The remaining three stanzas move through the rest of the church year, associating yew with Easter, birch with Pentecost, and rushes and oak with Ordinary Time. The changing of seasonal decorations becomes for Herrick an emblem of the transience of life.

As the choir hums wistfully on, Father Christmas appears, giving this speech (the bracketed annotations are by Eleanor Parker):

Now have good day, now have good day!
I am Christmas, but now I go my way.

Here have I dwelt with more and less [i.e., everyone]
From Hallowtide till Candlemas,
And now I must from you hence pass;
Now have good day!

I take my leave of king and knight,
Earl and baron, and lady bright;
To wilderness I must me dight; [I must prepare myself to go into the wilderness]
Now have good day!

And of the good lord of this hall
I take my leave, and of guests all;
Methinks I hear that Lent doth call;
Now have good day!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Another year I trust I shall
Make merry in this hall,
If rest and peace in our fair land may fall;
Now have good day!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now fare ye well, all in fere; [together]
Now fare ye well for all this year;
Yet for my sake make ye good cheer;
Now have good day!

This sixteenth-century carol is compiled in the commonplace book of the London merchant Richard Hill (Oxford, Balliol College MS 354).

“Anna the Prophetess” by Tania Runyan (poem)

Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments
Jinks, Sam_Woman and Child
Sam Jinks (Australian, 1973–), Woman and Child, 2010. Silicone, silk, human hair, acrylic, nylon, polyurethane foam, timber, 145 × 40 × 40 cm. Shepparton Art Museum, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia.
Widows of Jerusalem, I too was once
young enough to believe my life mattered.
When I woke, the sun rose for me. I tucked lilies in my hair.
Now I am eighty years a temple dweller.

What a wonder of faith! they proclaim. Truth is,
I cry in the dark. I beg priests for bread

and pick insects from my hem. But today,
an infant came to be blessed. He curled

into the crook of my arm, and when his eyes
wandered to mine, I remembered every hope

stored in my childhood’s heart: gazelles
and henna shrubs, doves perched in the crags.

I touched his face—
that skin we were meant to wear forever.

Inspired by Luke 2:36–38, this poem appears in Tania Runyan’s first full-length poetry collection, Simple Weight (Lexington, KY: FutureCycle, 2010). Used by permission.

Tania Runyan, MA/MFA, lives in Illinois, teaching sixth-grade language arts, speaking at writing workshops, and writing poetry, much of which grapples with scripture. She is the author of five poetry collections—What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air—and the popular instructional guides How to Read a Poem and How to Write a Poem. Her most recent book is Making Peace with Paradise: An Autobiography of a California Girl, about her West Coast upbringing.

“Wait and See (Simeon and Anna)” by Richard Bauckham

Victoria Emily Jones7 Comments
Sam Nhlengethwa (South African, 1955–), Train Station Waiting Room II, 2014. Photolithograph and Chine collé, 43 × 53 cm. Edition of 10. Collection of the Southern African Foundation For Contemporary Art (SAFFCA). © the artist and Goodman Gallery.

In the drab waiting-room
the failed travellers, resigned, sleep
on the hard benches, inured
to postponement and foul coffee.
Hope has given up on them.

There are also the impatient,
pacing platforms, and the driven,
purple with frustration, abusing
their mobiles, for the hardest part
of waiting is the not doing.

Truly to wait is pure dependence.
But waiting too long the heart
grows sclerotic. Will it still
be fit to leap when the time comes?
Prayer is waiting with desire.

Two aged lives incarnate
century on century
of waiting for God, their waiting-room
his temple, waiting on his presence,
marking time by practicing

the cycle of the sacrifices,
ferial and festival,
circling onward, spiralling
towards a centre out ahead,
seasons of revolving hope.

Holding out for God who cannot
be given up for dead, holding
him to his promises – not now,
not just yet, but soon, surely,
eyes will see what hearts await.

Richard Bauckham, FRSE, FBA, is a renowned English biblical scholar and theologian, whose many published works include The Theology of the Book of Revelation (1993) and Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006). He’s also a hobbyist poet! I’ve published this poem with his permission. It’s inspired by Luke 2:22–38, which describes two elderly Jews, “righteous and devout,” who had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” the Messiah, for many years and finally encountered him at the temple one day in the infant Jesus of Nazareth. This “Presentation at the Temple,” as the episode is called, is commemorated yearly by Christians on February 2, Candlemas.

Bauckham’s definition of prayer—“waiting with desire”—is the most succinct, and probably the best, I’ve ever heard. His poem enjoins us to assume the same “waiting with desire” posture as Simeon and Anna as we look fervently toward the Christ’s second coming, when God will dwell with humanity face to face once again, this time everlastingly.

(Update, December 2022: This poem now appears in Bauckham’s first volume of poetry, Tumbling into Light, published by Canterbury Press.)

My Eyes Have Seen (Artful Devotion)

Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

Blanco, Severino_Simeon Blessing the Christ Child
Severino Blanco, Simeon Blessing the Christ Child, 1980s. Image courtesy of Ayopaya Mission.

Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”

—Luke 2:25–32

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SONG: “You Send Your Servant Forth in Peace” by Steve Thorngate, on After the Longest Night: Songs for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (2018)

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Severino Blanco is a Quechuan Christian artist from Cochabamba, Bolivia. In the early 1980s he was commissioned by Father Manfred Rauh (1932–2011), a Jesuit missionary from Germany who spent most of his priestly life in Bolivia, to create a Life of Christ painting cycle for the interior of the chapel of the Casa del Catequista (CADECA), a training center for catechists. To make the gospel story really come alive for the catechists, who are mostly Quechua and Aymara, Blanco chose to set it in an Andean context, with Jesus as an indigenous South American—fully human, fully immersed in history and culture, fully for them. The images are reproduced, with commentary, in the German-language book Von Befreiung und Erlösung: Bilder in CADECA Cochabamba/Bolivien (Of Liberation and Redemption: Pictures in CADECA Cochabamba, Bolivia). A few can also be viewed online here, here, and here. The chapel was consecrated in 1984 and is still in use.

Though I couldn’t confirm it, I believe Blanco’s Simeon Blessing the Christ Child is located in the CADECA chapel. Joseph, dressed in poncho and chullo (knitted hat with earflaps), carries two little birds to present as an offering for his son’s dedication. Mary, barefoot, is dressed in a red hooded shawl and a long blue skirt—the colors traditionally associated with Mary in the West—and has just laid down what I’m guessing might be an aguayo, the sling she uses to transport Jesus on her back. (Or perhaps it’s Simeon’s hat, which he removed in reverence?) As for Jesus, he is swaddled in colorful, patterned, homespun wool. When Mary passes the babe to Simeon, he is elated to receive into his arms salvation incarnate. He turns his eyes upward to God the Father, whose presence is suggested by a golden sun-face, whose rays shine forth also in the halo of the Son. The designs on these terminals, and around the border of the painting, are deeply influenced by traditional Andean art.

“A light for revelation to the Gentiles,” salvation prepared for “all peoples”—these phrases from the lectionary jingle in my ears as I meditate on Blanco’s painting.

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Here are the Artful Devotions for Candlemas from the previous two church year cycles:

This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.

To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, cycle A, click here.

Nunc dimittis (Artful Devotion)

Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

presentation of christ in the temple
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, ca. 1650. Tempera on wood. Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, Massachusetts.

Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.

—Luke 2:29–32

These words were sung two thousand-plus years ago by a Jewish man named Simeon upon seeing and holding the newborn Christ child at his presentation ceremony at the temple in Jerusalem. Known as the “Nunc dimittis” (from the Latin for “Now you dismiss”), the song has been used year-round in Compline, Vespers, and Evensong worship services since the fourth century. Since the seventh century, it has served as the centerpiece of the annual feast day known as Candlemas, celebrated February 2 in the West and February 15 in the East (the Western and Eastern churches count forward forty days from their celebration of Christmas Day, on December 25 and January 6, respectively).

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SONG: “Nunc dimittis” from All-Night Vigil, Op. 37, by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1915) | Arranged by Bob Chilcott (2016) | Performed by Katie Melua and the Gori Women’s Choir, on In Winter (2016)

Rachmaninoff’s “Nunc dimittis,” the fifth movement of his All-Night Vigil, was one of his favorite compositions of his career, and he requested that it be performed at his funeral. Its melody is based on a Kievan chant from the Russian Orthodox Vespers service but employs a few rhythmic adjustments and is carried forward by a soloist. As Vladimir Morosan notes in his essay “The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff,” “The slow rocking motion of the accompanying voices on two-note descending figures, akin to a lullaby, imparts to the piece a static and peaceful quality.”

The performance above is by Katie Melua, a Georgian singer-songwriter from the UK, who in 2016 returned to her native Georgia to record a winter-themed album with one of the country’s all-women singing troupes. The choral arrangements on In Winter, including “Nunc dimittis,” were specially commissioned from Bob Chilcott.

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Icons are central to the devotional lives of Orthodox Christians. Here I’ve included three from the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, which I had the pleasure of visiting about five years ago. Iconographers follow very specific guidelines in their writing of icons, which is why there has been little variation over the centuries. To learn how to read an icon of the Presentation of the Lord, see this “iconreader” blog post.

Presentation of Christ in the Temple
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, 1600. Tempera on wood. Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, Massachusetts.

Presentation of Christ in the Temple
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, 16th century. Tempera on wood, 24 × 16 in. Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, Massachusetts.

This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.

To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, cycle C, click here.

Now I’ve Seen It All (Artful Devotion)

Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

Simeon in the Temple by Rembrandt
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), Simeon in the Temple, 1669. Oil on canvas, 98.5 × 79.5 cm. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden.

Candlemas, celebrated every year on February 2, commemorates the presentation of Jesus at the temple forty days after his birth, according to Jewish custom (Luke 2:22–40). While there, the Holy Family encountered Simeon, an elderly man, “righteous and devout,” who was “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” Though weak and tired with age, he was told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before laying eyes on the messiah of his people, and he banked on that promise. When the Spirit led him to the temple that day, he beheld the baby Jesus and knew instantly that this was the One he had been waiting for—and not only him, but the whole world. He took the child in his arms and sang this canticle, known in church tradition as the “Nunc dimittis” (“Now you dismiss . . .”):

Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation
that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel. (vv. 28–32)

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SONG: “Until My Dying Day Has Come” by Carl-Eric Tangen, from Incarnation Hymns (2008)

 

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Probably Rembrandt’s last painting, Simeon in the Temple was found unfinished on an easel in his studio when he died. It depicts this enlightening moment from Luke 2, in which Simeon recognizes the Christ and exults—quietly, gratefully—in his salvation. The woman in the shadows, thought to be a later addition by another’s hand, is probably the prophetess Anna, though some suppose her to be Mary.

This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.

To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, cycle B, click here.