Candlemas (again)

Steve Ashley sings a "Candlemas Carol" which begins:

"Oh, Candlemas beware old man

The wind gale and the storm,

For if you think that winter's dead

It's barely been born,

And if you think that the spring has come,

With the bright sun in the sky

An icy wind blows icy tears

From the corner of your eye"

I posted last year about Candlemas, and here I am again. This year it is much colder and I am more inclined to appreciate Steve Ashley's point. So, how to reconcile the conflict between a logical division of the year by length of the day and our observation that there continues to be cold weather after winter (and for that matter warm weather after summer).

I see two factors at work here, the first being that it should be possible to divide the year up into two "great seasons" of warmth and coldness and that the boundary would therefore be the equinoxes, the dates when the day and the night are both twelve hours long (give or take a few minutes). With this pattern, half of spring would fall within the greater winter and the other half would fall in the greater summer. The same apply to autumn.

The other factor is the physical laws relating to the conservation of heat. It feels like summer through August and into September because the energy provided by the sun is still present as warm atmospheric conditions and warm land surfaces. February and early March feel like winter because a lot of the sun's heat is taken up  just with heating that mass of air and the upper layers of the surface.

Candlemas

I've been thinking again over the last few days about the seasons.

It is accepted by the majority of people that summer begins at the Summer Solstice, autumn at the Autumnal Equinox, winter at the Winter Solstice and spring at the Vernal Equinox. So in the UK we have the BBC running their Autumn Watch programme in November and their Spring Watch programme in May.

We seem to base these seasons more on whether we expect the weather to be warm or cold than anything else. Yet there is an older perception of the seasons which survive in the expressions Midsummer and Midwinter. These clearly refer to the longest and shortest days of the year respectively. So the start of winter is also midwinter?

The major pointers are what pagans refer to as the Fire Festivals - Candlemas, Mayday, Lammas and Hallowe'en. These occur roughly three months apart and also midway between the equinox/solstice dates. These then, surely, are the real beginning of the seasons. Therefore, cold though it may be, we are now entering into Spring.

I was out in the garden at the weekend and was delighted to see some bulbs that we put in last year poking their heads through the soil. Even better, all along the hedgerow there is a mass of green buds, ready to burst into leaf as soon as the conditions are right.

It seems to me that things are definitely Springing!