Candlemas (Feast of the Presentation)

A feast on February 2 (calculated as the fortieth day after Christmas) commemorating the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple and the purification of Mary, with a solemn procession observed in Jerusalem from at least the 380s. The feast's popular name "Candlemas" derives from a later tradition of blessing and processing with candles, representing Christ as "light to the Gentiles" as prophesied by Simeon (Luke 2:32); however, the candle blessing was a subsequent Western development and was not part of the original Jerusalem observance. The feast reached Constantinople by 542 when Emperor Justinian ordered it observed throughout the East as a public thanksgiving for the cessation of the great plague; Pope Sergius I (d. 701) introduced a candlelit procession at Rome; the formal blessing of candles became widespread in England and the West by the 11th century.