Lampions and Grannies

Published on 2025 winter newsletter

Starting over in January is always a struggle.

We arrive in December with a mountain of work to do, we always end up cooking too much, doing too many things, sleeping too little, and in the end, we're more tired than when we started the Christmas holidays.

January resolutions should start much later, like mid-March; it seems like a good time to come up with new ideas.

In January, the garden stops, the animals hibernate, it gets dark, and leaving the house requires too many layers of cloths.

But as I think about it, the signs appear. The teacher's email asking to bring bottles, or flasks, or "the special light bulb" to school.

The shops put pans on display. And you wonder why where once there were chewing gum or last-minute decorations, there are now baskets of pans.

The answer traditionally smells of dried peas and lard, or more recently of crepes and candy.

Children bring home g a lantern they made at school, a creative mix of recycled bottles and too much papier-mâché, paint, and a small battery-powered lantern. They carry it around the village on February 2nd, singing "Léiwer Härgottsblieschen" and receiving candy and coins.

Given the drama in the lyrics, I honestly recommend keeping both handy.

A pagan festival of lights, the return of long days, reabsorbed into Christian tradition, Candlemas is a celebration of famine, of the season when little of the winter supplies remained.

It is one of the few celebrations that has survived at home, if only because it is one of the few holidays that immediately announces what will be for dinner, as for Candelmas you make crepes.

After all, the advantage of having Britton relatives is that you always know how to use a pan, even without buying a new one.

See you soon, with new stories from the Forest