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Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary
Presentation
of Christ
in the Temple
It’s the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary -- or it was in one period. (The modern Church calls it the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.) In the Mosaic Law there's a rule that for forty days after she gives birth to a son, a woman is “unclean” and can't attend religious services. Why is she “unclean”? Because she is bleeding. Just as if she were menstruating, she is taboo until she finishes -- well, actually, the fluid she's producing, called lochia, is mostly water with enough blood in it to make it look like blood. Her uterine lining is shrinking and contracting and healing after having the placenta detach from it shortly after the birth. Takes about six weeks to dry up. In other words, forty days. What the purification was that the Virgin (and other Jewish women as well) was going through was a visit to the local mikveh or ritual bath. It wasn't that she was unclean. The Jewish word is niddah, which is really not translatable. Perhaps taboo would be a little closer. As Jesus was her first-born male child, the ceremony that was happening is pidyon ha-ben, or Redemption of the Firstborn, which is why Joseph and Mary were going to the Temple. Only the children of Levites were exempt from this, as they were already “redeemed”.
Women who were niddah slept separately from their husbands, and it wasn't until after the visit to the mikveh did normal spousal relationships resume. This pattern applied on the birth of a son. If she has given birth to a daughter, the mother has to wait sixty days, just for good measure. The ancient Hebrews were not what you'd call egalitarian....) At the end of the forty days, the mother is brought to the Temple (if within range, otherwise the local synagogue) and ritually purified. After this she can go to religious services again, and generally go out in public. Candlemas, February 2nd, is forty days after Christmas. So we celebrate the ritual Purification of the Virgin Mary, the specified forty days after she gave birth to Jesus. The Feast of the Purification is also called Candlemas because that's the day on which the year's supply of candles (for church, not household use) are blessed. Candlemas is a cross-quarter day, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Many northern European pagans celebrated in various ways on the quarter days and cross-quarter days; making a big thing out of Candlemas gave new converts something else to do when they might otherwise have been tempted to backslide. This is a very old tradition. We celebrate Christmas on December 25th because the early Church wanted its flock to have something else to do during the Saturnalia. Quarter-days and cross-quarter-days were the days on which you paid rent, or interest on a loan, or took on or gave up rental property. (Michaelmas, at the fall equinox, was the day on which a tenant farmer took possession of his land.) Incidentally, the Christian Church performed similar rituals including two purification rituals -- one for if the child survived, and one for if it died. The service is called “churching,” because until it’s performed the mother doesn’t go to church. You can read that as “doesn’t have to” or “is forbidden to” as you choose. Keep in mind that under this system, if she doesn’t want to get up, she doesn’t have to, not even on Sunday. So what do you do on Candlemas, if you haven’t had a baby lately? Dress pretty and have fun. Burn lots of candles. Sing songs about spring, even if it seems a bit premature. |
