Candlemas

Yesterday's post mentioned Candlemas among the cross-quarter days. It takes place on 2 February, and has taken on Christian associations, most notably the day when Christians take their candles to Church and have them blessed for use in the coming year. For Christianity, Candlemas is also called the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, or the Feast of the Holy Encounter. These names arise from the Gospel of Luke Chapter 2 in which Jesus is brought to the Temple and Simeon recognizes that Jesus is special.

The date of 2 February was noted outside of Christianity as well. The Celtic feast of Imbolc was celebrated on 1 or 2 February, marking the start of spring. It is mentioned in early Irish literature as the start of lambing season, and the Christian association of 2 February with St. Brigid is thought to be a Christianization of the pre-Christian Irish goddess Brigid, associated with domestic animals among other things.

Tradition in France, Belgium, and other countries stated that this was the date when Christmas decorations should be put away (a custom I would like to see followed in my neighborhood). In France making crepes is associated with the day; flipping a crepe while holding a gold coin in the other hand is supposed to ensure good luck for the year.

In Germany, Candlemas is associated with payments and rents, as we saw connected with Quarter Days. The Candlemas prediction in Catalonia was that, if there is bad weather on Candlemas, good weather will follow for the coming year.

In Hungary, the tradition has children dress as bears and eat honey. This is because it is the date that bears come out of their den to see if winter is over; they see their shadows because of the sun, and are frightened by it and return to hibernate for a time. This is the origin of the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition of Groundhog Day that took root in North America.

Was St. Brigid a real Christian saint, or a Christianization of an Irish legend? Tomorrow we'll look at the stories and see what evidence there may be.

Bee-keeping

The value of honey was no doubt discovered long before human beings started keeping written records. The Egyptians were maintaining bees as far back as 2450 BCE. In the Middle Ages, bees were seen as a source of not only honey, but also wax for candles wanted by the church and the aristocracy. They had other methods of lighting, such as tallow and rushlights, but wax candles were the best. 

Many people kept bees for these purposes, but the practice was so common that there was no need to explain it, and so the "rules" of beekeeping are scarce. The Geoponika, a 20-volume Byzantine collection of agricultural knowledge from the 900s includes "of the management of bees" in book 15.

The bee is the wisest and cleverest of all animals and the closest to man in intelligence; its works is truly divine and of the greatest use to mankind. Its social life resembles that of the best regulated cities. In their excursions bees follow a leader and obey instructions. They bring back sticky secretions from flowers and trees and spread them like ointment on their floors and doorways. Some are employed in making honey and some in other tasks. The bee is extremely clean, settling on nothing that is bad-smelling or impure;

Initial beekeeping was finding the trees the bees themselves had used and watching them. Holes would be bored, or even small wooden doors installed, to give access to the honey inside and to be able to seal up the hive against inclement weather. Once humans decided to keep the bees closer, they built hives of any material available: clay, wicker, straw, wood. Some documents warn against stone and clay, because the summer heat would make them unbearable. Pliny the Elder mentions hives made from horn and translucent stone, but there is no evidence that any hives made like that ever existed.

Skeps—domes of straw with a small hole—became common in the 14th century. They were easy to make, but to get at the wax and honey you needed to disturb the bees. Another problem with skeps was that they were small and easily stolen. Wax and honey were that important. We know the wax was for candles, but honey had lots of uses.

We will go into that next.

The Chandler

From a site that sells reproductions.

Consider the candle. Today it is a quaint device used for "mood" lighting, romance, or to create a historical-looking scene. Want to suggest a pre-Industrial Age home? Use candles. Of course, cinematic scenes pack as many candles as possible into the space in order to provide justification for the well-lit setting. In the Middle Ages, however, and right up through the Industrial Age, candles were too expensive to place them all over and light them. The family would gather around the table with a single candle in the center, each family member working on his or her project: sewing, knitting, reading, or playing.

Candles were expensive—depending upon what kind of candles they were, that is. A chandler, or candle-maker, produced one of two types: tallow or wax candles.

Tallow candles were made by rendering animal fat and dipping the wick (made from a braided string) into it. The fat would cool and harden, and you would then dip the result into the melted tallow again, pulling it out when a new layer of fat was deposited and before the original layer re-melted.

Tallow candles were cheaper than beeswax candles. Many households had their own livestock and could produce their own fat. To make a lot of tallow candles, however, required a lot of tallow. Tallow was also used for soap, and the household's animal fat had to be divided up between candle-making and soap-making. Professional tallow chandlers would procure large amounts of tallow by dealing with butchers, and could produce and sell tallow candles in large quantities.

Tallow candles were a yellowish color because of their source material, and although they provided light, they also produced an unpleasant odor. Not only that, they were a draw for rodents, who loved to gnaw on what was essentially congealed animal fat. For that reason, those who could afford it would purchase candles made from beeswax.

Beeswax was more difficult to come by, since it had to come from hives. You would not want to devastate the hive by taking all its wax and causing harm to the bees, so you had to carefully harvest the wax. Wax candles were lighter in color, depending on their treatment. Initially yellowish, if the blocks of wax were left out in the sun long enough, they bleached white.

Wax candles did not give off the odor of burning animal fat, and were much preferred by churches and wealthier households. It was possible to supplement the wax with some tallow. Later laws put an upper limit to the amount of tallow that was allowed in wax candles, however.