Spring Season: Candlemas – 2nd February

Simple living is not something we arrive at or accomplish. It is something that we nurture throughout our entire lives.
-KAETLYN ANNE

A little bit of background

Most festivals are not new celebrations, many have been around for centuries. Festivals help us connect to our history. Just such a festival, Candlemas, is the first festival of this spring season. One point in the year overlies with many traditions.

Originally a Celtic festival to mark the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, the church later adopted the feast day as a time to renew and bless all the candles needed for the coming year, hence the name Candlemas.

In my family I feel like this is the beginning of the spring season: where we start to look around, outside of our home, venturing out more as the light returns, and getting the garden ready for another year.

We can all commonly experience this time of year as a return of the light. It feels uplifting to dwell on the ways we are bound together by our shared experience – being human.

The Spring season is the time when we honour the beginning of the earth’s rebirth. From the bare earth of winter, snowdrops start to appear; nature’s little candles heralding the coming Spring.

Why is Seasonal Rhythm So Important for children?

Following the seasons at home can hep your children feel safe. Like the steady hand, a path to follow in an every changing world. When we experience nature inwardly as a human being we are part of something much greater than ourselves. I think this quote explains it best for me:
“I know about what I am as a human only when I don’t live alongside nature passively, but when I allow myself to be lifted up to the heavens in summer and when I let myself sink down in winter into the Earth in winter.”
The modern world is a tumble-dyer, endlessly spinning faster and faster. Its easy for children to feel rudderless. I have found following the seasons and festivals, bringing those celebrations into our home provides connection, center and calm.

5 Ways to bringing Candlemas into your home:

1. If you have a nature table, great – add a yellow or green cloth to your nature table, you could add just a little and grow this colour in the home over the next month. If you dont have a nature table yet I would take a look at this blog post and hopefully that can help you get started. I think they are a fantastic way to get children involved in seasonal living and festivals.
2. Try make Beeswax candles together. Rolled beeswax candles give off a golden glow and with a little help are a craft project for even the littlest hands.
3. Can you plant bulbs in the garden or in a little pot inside? Any bulb would do but if you wanted to help out Mother Earth you could check out what wild flowers need a bit of help reestablishing themselves (like our English bluebells) and plant them!
4. In the Early Years the children might bury a candle in the ground to wake up Mother Earth and all her bulbs, my children now they are older enjoy pushing a lit candle into the soft ground among the new bulbs while we have a little look for signs of spring. season.
5. Take a branch with catkins or buds and bring it inside for the table. Having this visual reminder of the changing seasons and spring stirring is uplifting.

Final Thoughts

I hope you and your children can make time to get outside, look for green bulbs, notice the catkins and green buds. It’s a great time to feel the rising energy and to get a fresh perspective on things. I guess thats why so many have the tradition of spring clean. I love it when we can open all the windows give anything a good air and get rid of everything that doesn’t serve us anymore.

Best spring season blessings

Steph

xox