St John the Baptist, Middleton

THANK YOU........... To everyone who contributed towards all of the 2025 Christmas services and events in any way.

CANDLEMAS

Some of us keep our Nativity Scene/Stables out until Candlemas, which occurs forty days after Christmas, on February 2nd. It marks the presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the purification of Mary after childbirth, according to Jewish tradition. Many Christians, especially Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and some mainstream Protestant denominations, including Lutherans and Methodists, take their candles to their local church at Candlemas, where they are blessed and then used for the rest of the year. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, we no longer use candles to light our homes, but in times gone by, candles were extremely important in the home. In church, candles symbolise Christ, the light of the world and we light candles when we worship and pray to God.

Candlemas can be seen as a pivotal point where we turn away from the celebrations of Christmas towards the cross and the empty tomb. It may seem odd to be thinking this way so soon after Christmas, but Ash Wednesday falls on 18th February. Maybe it is in fact good for us to have this seemingly short space of time between the joy of Christmas and the beginning of Lent, because just as our Christian traditions are entwined with Jewish traditions and prophecies, so are the events of Jesus’ birth and his death and resurrection inextricably entwined. The signs were there at his birth. God gave his Son to save us and he keeps picking us up, however many times we fall.

Noel

St John the Baptist, Middleton

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