What's the connection between Little House on the Prairie and Candlemas Day?

Last night, once I was assured that everyone I love was safe and sound inside their homes rather than stranded somewhere in a snow drifted ditch, I settled down and allowed myself to savor the particular pleasures that go along with being snow-bound on a dark and stormy night.

It always reminds me of how much I loved reading the Little House on the Prairie Books when I was a child – especially on blizzardy winter nights with the wind howling through the trees and the snow swirling against the windows.

I used to imagine myself right there in the little log cabin on the banks of Plum Creek, or along the shores of Silver Lake, or in the big woods of Wisconsin. I’d pretend I was tucked in next to Laura and Mary in a big feather bed, all snug and warm under a patchwork quilt, drifting off to sleep with the wind rattling the window panes and the light from the fire flickering on the log walls.

“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds would make it flicker because it would not give up."

— Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

I woke up this morning and remembered that it’s the 2nd of February, Candlemas Day. I love the amazing interconnectedness of things – last night’s blizzard….which put me into a Little House on the Prairie Mood…which sent me scurrying for a copy of the Long Winter…which yielded the quote about the little light that burned very low but did not even flicker ,,,which is so appropriate for today, Candlemas Day.

Candlemas, the climax to the Christmas and Epiphany liturgical season, is filled with symbolism. It’s the Church’s feast of the presentation of the Child Jesus in the temple and harkens back to Jewish rituals of purification and offering following childbirth. It’s filled with predictions about things to come because of the encounter with the prophetess Anna and ancient Simeon who declares that the child will be “a light for revelation to the nations” (Luke 2:32)

Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple

Hans Holbein

And so a ritual evolved in the Church involving candles and a dawn procession that used to be practiced in churches throughout Christendom until the Reformation. That hasn’t kept the ritual from being kept alive in Cistercian monasteries. And in fact one of my favorite memories of the three months I spent with the Sisters at Mississippi Abbey is the morning I participated in the Candlemas procession there.

We gathered just before dawn in the dimly lit scriptorium where we were each given a lighted candle to carry with us as processed into the darkened church for morning Mass. Prior to the reading of the Gospel, we rose from our choir stalls and took our candles up to the altar where they remained until darkness fell again and Compline brought the day to its close.

Today, on this cold winter morning I have gathered together as many candles as I can find in the house and arranged them all on the dining room table. I want to keep them burning there throughout the day and into the night, symbols of light, hope and revelation, reminders of what it means to live in a world where each of us has a part to play in spreading this kind of light into one another’s lives.