Why You Should be Afraid of the Dark
And Meaning of Candlemas
We’ve had electric lighting for less than 150 years. Credit Thomas Edison if you like. He developed the bamboo filament which gave his lamps a lifetime of up to 1,200 hours. His superior vacuum pump fully removed the air from the bulb. And he developed the Edison screw, still a standard socket fitting for light bulbs. Clever fellow. You could also credit William Sawyer and Albon Man, who received a U.S. patent for the incandescent lamp, and Joseph Swan, who patented his light bulb in England.
But you can’t have electric lighting in your home without electricity. A third of British homes made it through the 1930s without electricity. I have a relative who still remembers it being installed in their home in the 1950s and used to light a solitary lightbulb. Eventually alternatives, like gas and oil lamps, were snuffed out.
I’m sitting in my living room as I type it. I can see about sixteen lightbulbs. There’s a fire burning, mostly for effect and a bit of extra warmth. On the mantlepiece are some tea lights which, come to think of it, are battery-operated. Even the shoe cupboard under the stairs has a light in it.
What this means is this: hardly any of us in the West know what darkness is. And so the festival of Candlemas has lost some of its potency.
As the name suggests, Candlemas celebrated on 2nd February is about candles, which mean something different to us today. If you’re buying a candle in 2024, it’s probably the scented and soothing kind that you’d place beside a bath. But in the church world, candles are weapons against the darkness. But we’ll come back to that.
Why Now?
Candlemas takes place forty days after the birth of Jesus Christ. It is a full stop to any lingering Christmas celebrations, any greenery needing to be out of the house on Candlemas Eve. I will remove my 20+C+M+B+24 from my front door (which I had to explain to a delivery man the other day, that was quite fun). But I’m telling you now: the fairy lights in our kitchen are staying up until at least Easter, if not Pentecost.
I was not brought up with these traditional Christian festivals so I did not became aware of the word ‘Candlemas’ until university. It was the name of the ball for St Chad’s College, Durham, which took place in early February. St Chad’s had a reputation for High Anglicanism which I found very strange. My college was next door: Hatfield (not Collingwood as Wikipedia erroneously reports). Hatfield did not have a reputation for any form of Anglicanism. It was a hotbed of cheerful if slightly entitled public school boys and girls who were ‘good chaps’. Not exactly the world of Tim-Nice-But-Dim but Tim-not-quite-sharp-enough-to-get-into-Cambridge. Hatfielders could expect a job at a large accountancy firm if the international sporting career fell through (alumni including Will Carling and Andrew Strauss) or they were not recruited by MI5.
Personal digression over. Where were we? Oh yes. Candlemas.
Origins of Candlemas
The first mention of Candlemas was over a thousand years ago in 1014. At that time, Christians in England were more interested in the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary aspect of the celebration. She had become a very popular figure in Christian worship by that time. This was a period when thousands of churches were being constructed and dedicated, hence over 2300 churches in England are named after her. The next most popular dedication is All Saints with about 1400.
Candlemas continued to be celebrated after the Reformation, which frowned upon the veneration of the Virgin Mary. They continued the celebration of Candlemas by leaning into the Presentation of Christ at the Temple, although the purification is also mentioned in Luke 2:
When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”, and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2:22-24)
No sign of candles. We’re coming to that.
At the Temple was a man called Simeon (see pic), one of a very short list of men described as ‘righteous.’ When he saw the Christ child, he took him in his arms and said:
“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”
At the end, we see the last manifestation of God that began with the wise men bowing down to the King of Kings on the Day of Epiphany. Jesus is a light to the Gentiles. There is evidence that this story was acted out in churches or public places, but the focus seems to have been candles. Before the Act of Uniformity imposed Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer in 1549, the Sarum Missal was the most common liturgy used in England. It contained this prayer to be said at Candlemas:
Bless, O Lord Jesu Christ, this creature of wax for us who pray to Thee; and pour Thy heavenly blessing upon it, by virtue of the Holy Cross that, as Thou hast permitted it to be used by men to dispel darkness, such may be the measure of power and benediction which receiveth by the sign of Thy Holy Cross, that whereinsoever it shall be lighter or set up, the Devil may depart in fear and trembling, and flee away, with all his, out of those dwellings, nor presume any more to disquiet them that serve Thee. Who, with God the Father and the Holy Ghost, livest and reignest God, world without end. Amen.
In other words, these candles are weapons against the Devil. For centuries, every night, everyone was plunged into darkness. The only protection from the dark was the candle.
The Darkness
But who needs protection from the dark? Isn’t the main concern stubbing your toe on the door post or treading on the medieval equivalent of Lego? We tell our children: you don’t need to be afraid of the dark.
Actually, you do.
You should be afraid of the dark.
Bad things happen in the dark. We are defenceless in the dark. The devil loves the dark. Sin happens at night.
If we’re Protestants, we might feel like this is Catholic superstition. This is why Candlemas faded away after the Reformation, but the spiritual reality remains true. Many of us Christians are not so much Protestants as Disenchanted Modernists who find the spiritual realm rather silly.
It feels like that attitude is beginning to change. It should. In the Bible, darkness is never a good thing. The apostle Paul writes:
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. (Ephesians 5:8-12)
But we must also not be naïve that a spiritual war is still raging – even though the final outcome is not in doubt. Whatever the source of your demonology, frightening supernatural experiences take place overwhelmingly at night. This is reflected in night-time prayers. Even the modern ones in Common Worship retain the idea of spiritual protection. I regularly pray this Anglican prayer with my children at night:
Visit this place, O Lord, we pray,
and drive far from it the snares of the enemy;
may your holy angels dwell with us and guard us in peace,
and may your blessing be always upon us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
It’s not a specific prayer for Candlemas. But it’s a healthy reminder that we are utterly dependent on God for protection from ‘the snares of the enemy’. And all principalities and powers beg for mercy when they encounter Christ. There is no contest or jeopardy.
So, if you light a candle this evening on Candlemas, at the very end of the Christmas season, remember that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, cannot, did not and will never overcome it. I plan to do that, and then give thanks that even my shoes have electric lights.
One last thing…
While looking up the Sarum Missal, I found another prayer from Candlemas that I just had to share:
O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty and everlasting God, Who didst create all things out of nothing, and by the labour of bees at Thy command hast brought this fluid to the perfection of wax; and Who, on this day; didst fulfil the desire of righteous Simon; we humbly beseech Thee, that by the invocation of Thy Holy Name, etc…
Thanks for the historical background! *goes to dig out a candle to light this evening*