Candlemas, an ecclesiastical festival observed on 2d February in honour of the Purification (q.v.) of the Virgin Mary, when she presented the infant Jesus in the temple. The great feast of expiation and purification (Februa) in ancient Rome was held on the 15th of February, and the origin of the Christian festival is explained by some as a mere turning to Christian account of the ancient heathen rite. At any rate, the festival seems to have been instituted by the Emperor Justinian in 541 or 542. A principal part of the celebration is a procession with many lighted candles, and those required for the service of the ensuing year are also on that occasion consecrated; hence the name Candlemas Day.
The candle-bearing, as old at least as 665, was early explained as a reference to the words of Simeon, when he took the infant Jesus in his arms and prophesied that he should be 'a light to lighten the Gentiles.' The two ideas became associated in the popular mind, and it became customary for women on being churched after their recovery from child-birth to carry candles with them. The practice of lighting up the churches in England was prohibited by an order of council in 1548, but still continues in use in the Roman Catholic Church. One old Scotch custom was that the schoolmaster was on this day presented with small offerings by his pupils; and in Scotland, this day is one of the four term-days. See TERM.
There is a tradition all over Christendom to the effect that a fine Candlemas portends a severe spring. Sir Thomas Browne in his Vulgar Errors quotes a Latin distich expressive of this idea. In Scotland, the prognostication is expressed in the following distich:
If Candlemas is fair and clear,
There'll be twa winters in the year.
Christ's Presentation, the Holiday of St Simeon, and, in the north of England, the Wives' Feast-day, were names given to Candlemas Day. See Ellis's edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities.