Today is a big day.
Liturgically, it is The Feast of the Presentation [of Jesus in the Temple] – see Luke 2:22-38. A rite of passage, a “once-in-a-lifetime event” in Jesus’s human life.
Also known as Candlemas, because apparently there is an old custom of bringing candles to church on this day to have them blessed.
Also, I have had to learn and forget and learn again, the last day to put away Christmas decorations (like nativity scenes) if we didn’t put them away on Epiphany. (We are more than OK this year, but there have been years we’ve needed the extension.)
Also Groundhog Day.
The eponymous film is, indeed, my favorite movie, and its annual re-viewing has, indeed, become a personal ritual. Even though it is, to my mind, more Wesleyan than Calvinist in its theology.
But for me, at least, Groundhog Day long ago also became, always, a day to observe for another reason.
People like Nell and Warren Moses are the truest once-in-a-lifetime events.
Images: “The Presentation in the Temple,” Giovanni Bellini, ca 1459 (cropped), Giovanni Bellini, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, and a public domain reproduction
Revised, originally published 02.02.2020
Matters of Interpretation 