It’s time to take down our Moravian Star. This wonderful object, with its 32 points sending light in all directions at night, has been gracing our porch since December 3rd (the beginning of Advent 2023). But its reign will end Friday the 2nd, on Candlemas.

First (let’s get this over and done with), Candlemas really is the last day you can display your Christmas decorations, at least according to the liturgical calendar. (Note: I did not write “the last day decorations can stand on a side buffet, waiting to be packed up properly.”)

Why is it the last day, you ask? (Or are you too busy trying to imagine who would leave up a Christmas tree until February 2nd?) The answer is, Candlemas brings the final event of the Christmas season with the commemoration of the 40th day from the birth of Christ, and therefore the day when infant Jesus would have been presented in the Temple (Luke 2:22-40) by Jewish Law. For Mary, too, this also would have been an important day, as a Jewish woman would have been purified 33 days after her baby boy’s circumcision. These two facts account for the other names we find for Candlemas: Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, and Feast of the Holy Encounter.

The celebration of Candlemas includes the ancient practice of bringing candles to be blessed. This tradition, carried forth in many denominations, including Catholics, Orthodox, Anglican, as well as some Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian congregations, is symbolic in the modern world. But think how this festival would have looked centuries ago, when a household sought to bring the full complement of candles needed for a year of domestic life!

The Feast of Candlemas is quite old, recorded as early as 380 AD. If you explore different national and ethnic aspects of Candlemas, you will discover not only different names (French, La Chandeleur; Dutch, Maria Lichtmis), but also specific foods coming into play: a special crepe for the French, for example, not to be confused with the flapjacks of Shrove Tuesday, which falls on February 13 this year. And yes, Lent does begin this year on Valentine’s Day. You have to smile at the coincidence of Ash Wednesday and the chocolate-rich blow-out of Valentine’s Day, right? Might this clash have come up in marketing meetings of world-wide marketing candy companies? If so, you can imagine that flow of conversation!

In our family, we haven’t gotten as far as either St. Valentines or Lent. Instead, I am lamenting the hours until the last rays of my beloved Moravian Star will stream into the night. How I love it, hanging on the front porch, illuminating the otherwise dark areas of our yard. How lonesome the yard seems when I unplug it and take it inside.

Moravian Stars were unknown to me until I encountered them in the 1980s while living in West Germany. Since that time, these stars, originally geometry experiments in a 19th-century Moravian settlement in Germany, have spread across the broader American culture. Still, no place compares to how they shine here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This whole region (today’s Forsyth County) was settled by Moravians in the mid-18th century. Just minutes away from us, for example, lies the village of Bethania, established by Moravians from Pennsylvania in 1759. A good collection of historic structures still stand, fully restored as beautiful residences. Virtually every one of those, as well as homes extending beyond them, displays a Moravian Star on the first day of Advent. The effect is transformative.

Right before Christmas, my grandson and I decided to count the Moravian Stars in our immediate neighborhood. We counted 19, which delighted him. Of these, ours is the only one still hanging (although the neighbors across the street are still plugging in the white lights that outline their trio of metal-framed deer). Late at night, I like to look out the living-room window at our Moravian Star and cherish the pleasure it has brought us across these wintry weeks. When compared with the technologically overwrought objects that fill our lives, few things are as rewarding. Our electric tea kettle is, for sure. The soup pot (particularly once it has soup in it!) also is. And don’t forget my mother’s 1959 GE electric carving knife which continues to saw away satisfactorily. But that star, held together at a few junctures with tape, pushes itself into the top spot.

Light has enormous power over our emotions—this we all know. That marvelous stream of candlelight emanating from a single flame during the singing of Silent Night at Christmas Eve Services etches a deep picture that lends inspiration throughout an entire year. The extraordinary winter sunsets common here do something similar. There was one of these yesterday when the swaths of darkening clouds yielded just a slit, through which the strong setting sun poured. That blast of light struck every one of the barren trees around us, turning them ashen white. Their branches flashed as if covered in ice.

I’m not good in the dark. I have lived in northern regions where the extra light of spring and summer is truly spectacular. Indeed, few things are more delicious than playing in a German park at 9:30 p.m. with plenty of light to kick a soccer ball. But you pay for those extra hours of summer light when winter comes, with its mid-morning sunrises and cold darkness falling in late afternoon. . . .

. . . which brings us back to candles. Close your eyes and try to fathom the incalculable spaces, across incalculable time, where candles have brought the only source of light to the whole population. I was reminded of this reading Great Expectations to my grandchildren, in the scene where Miss Havisham’s reluctant agent scoops up Pip and Joe, leads them home and into the “state parlour,” and begins to lay out the terms of Pip’s new “expectation” by the insufficient light of a single candle.

Next week I’ll be in California, speaking on the arts for a Classical summit for teachers. There will be a lot of light from the sky, I’m guessing—not quite summer, of course. Yet the aroma of costal air will instantly establish that winter is not in control. One thing is certain: I need to find the boxes where I’ve stored my spring travel clothes. And for that, I’m going to need a light. A flashlight, not a candle!