Before Groundhog Day, or at least before the film of that name, February 2nd used to be the day of the gráinneog. It’s Irish for hedgehog, one of several animals once credited with similar weather forecasting talents as Punxsutawny Phil.
Like Phil, by tradition, the gráinneog distrusted good weather on this date. Peering out of its burrow on the feast of Candlemas and seeing sunshine, it postponed spring in favour of extended hibernation. A complementary adage declared: “If Candlemas be bright and clear, there’ll be two winters in one year.”
There were versions of the tale all over Europe, with different beasts involved. The badger, bear, or fox could make the call on winter too. It was probably as German Dachstag (Badger Day) that the event crossed the Atlantic and, with the groundhog ousting the badger for the lead part, eventually reached Hollywood.
If winter can be extended on this date, the opposite applies to Christmas. For hard-core traditionalists, it has always been acceptable to keep cribs and decorations up throughout the month of January.
Prince of the church – Brian Maye on Cardinal Michael Logue
Conflict of many colours – Frank McNally on a finely illustrated atlas of the Civil War
Lunar quest – Frank McNally on moon missions, misinformed quiz questions, and mountweazels
The Dromcollogher cinema fire disaster – Frank McNally on a fateful day in 1926
But they had to come down on the eve of February 2nd, or you risked attracting mischievous spirits in proportion to the amount of yuletide greenery left hanging. Here’s the 17th-century poet and clergyman Robert Herrick, in Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve, reminding housemaids of the deadline:
“Down with the rosemary, and so/Down with the bays and mistletoe;/Down with the holly, ivy, all/Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas hall;/That so the superstitious find/No one least branch there leave behind;/For look, how many leaves there be/Neglected there, maids, trust to me/So many goblins you shall see.”
As a Christian feast-day, Candlemas had double significance, commemorating the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, 40 days after the nativity, and the Purification of the Virgin Mary.
The former explains the candle part. According to the Bible, the child was welcomed to the temple by Simeon, a righteous old man who had been assured he would not die until he saw the messiah.
Just before breathing his last (his feast-day is February 3rd), he predicted Jesus would be a “light of revelation” to the Gentiles. Hence the ritual blessing on this date of all candles to be used in church and homes in the coming year.
The purification of the Virgin was rooted in Jewish law but in turn led to the practice by which, after giving birth, Christian women had to be “churched”. That involved candles too but was was increasingly controversial after the reformation and disappeared almost everywhere, including belatedly Ireland, by the 1960s.
Chambers’ Book of Days tells of an ominous 11th-century joke on the churching theme involving William the Conqueror and his rival, the king of France. The former had grown fat and, when he was also struck down by illness for a time, the French king quipped that he must be “in childbed”.
William took the joke badly: “When I am churched,” he counter-quipped, “there shall be a thousand lights in France.” And whatever about the churching, he delivered on the promise, without candles. Recovering from sickness, he invaded French territory and “wasted wherever he went with fire and sword”.
On a more cheerful note, Candlemas is celebrated in modern France as the Jour des Crêpes, which may combine both Christian and pagan elements. The religious feast is La Chandeleur. But in the culinary ritual, the emphasis is on crêpe mixture rather than candle wax. Being big, round, and yellow, crêpes may also celebrate the February strengthening of the sun. Any excuse to eat them.
Perhaps the oddest celebration of Candlemas in Europe is the Jedburgh Ba’ game. Jedburgh is a town in southern Scotland. Ba’ is short for ball. The game played on the streets there every February 2nd is a version of mob football, once known in many countries, (including Ireland, where it was called caid), but with a local twist.
Centuries-old, the Jedburgh Ba’ pits the upper half of the town – the “Uppies” – against the lower half, the “Doonies”, which compete to carry a small, rugby-shaped and ribbon-bedecked ball through the streets in opposite directions.
There are no rules to speak of, and one measure of the anarchy involved is that shop windows are now routinely boarded up beforehand.
But broken limbs are less common than formerly too. And YouTube footage of recent instalments suggest that, as with actual rugby, play is dominated for long periods by scrums: mass pile-ups on the ground, from which the tiny ball may eventually be smuggled out up a jumper or down trousers.
The Jedburgh Ba’ game occurs at Easter as well as Candlemas. But any religious significance is not apparent. It may have more secular, historical, and bloody roots. By popular tradition, perhaps apocryphal, the original event was played with “the heads of English soldiers”.