Positivity Month Post #2: Candlemas Bells

'The snowdrop, in purest white array,

First rears her head on Candlemas Day'

 

and so an old name for snowdrops is Candlemas Bells.  I was talking to a friend about that this morning and we lamented the fact that from where we stood, we couldn't see any snowdrops.  I walked home and as I climbed the steps to my front door I saw... a very small clump of snowdrops right next to me in my neighbour's garden.  How they lifted my spirits! 

 

 

I apologise for the poor quality of this photo but I'm afraid it was the best I could do from an awkward angle, ie. from the steps as I didn't want to trespass. 

 

Apparently there is an old Shropshire custom which involves bringing a bowl of snowdrops into the house on this day, apparently the only day of the year on which it is safe to do so(!), to purify the house.  This is derived from the Festival of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, ie. Mary went to the temple 40 days after Jesus' birth to be "purified", but the feminist in me can't allow me to follow this tradition:  the view that giving birth makes a woman "unclean" so that she needs to be "purified" before she re-enters society smacks of misogyny and makes me Very Cross, and I really can't be doing with being Very Cross during a month of positivity, so this is a tradition I am not observing.  So there!

Keep warm and see you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x