We were delighted to reopen WMODA at the beginning of December. Our Board President, Ken Evans, dressed the museum with spectacular Christmas decorations he had collected for many years. We had three Christmas trees, vintage garlands and hand-blown Murano glass ornaments. Everybody was reluctant to take down the festive decorations, so what is the appropriate time – Twelfth Night or Candlemas Day?

According to modern tradition, Christmas trees and decorations should go up on the first day of Advent, which is the fourth Sunday before Christmas. However, in medieval England, houses were decorated with greenery for Christmastide, which starts at sunset on Christmas Eve and continues until the Eve of the feast of Epiphany on January 5th. Known as Twelfth Night, this was an occasion for revelry involving the antics of a Lord of Misrule.

The original twelve days of Christmas are well known from the popular carol featuring numerous gifts from “my true love” including gold rings, leaping lords and a partridge in a pear tree. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was written as a romantic comedy for the close of the Christmas season and features the carousing Sir Toby Belch. The play’s first documented public performance was at Candlemas on February 2, 1602.

In some churches, Epiphany is when Christians celebrate Jesus being visited by the Magi, also known as the Three Kings or Wise Men. In other churches, it celebrates Jesus' baptism. Today, many believe it is bad luck to keep decorations up after Twelfth Night on January 5, but this is a relatively modern invention. In the Middle Ages, decorations were taken down 40 days after Christmas on Candlemas Eve. The feast of Candlemas on February 2 is the official end of Christmastide and marks the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Candlemas Day was so called because candles to be used in churches throughout the year were blessed. Superstitious people believed that leaving the festive greenery up after Candlemas Eve would lead to possession by goblins. The 17th-century poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674) outlines the consequences.

The Candlemas legend fascinated Daisy Makeig Jones, the Wedgwood Fairyland Lustre designer, who depicted the candlelight ceremony on a series of vases at WMODA. Gnomes clamber up the sides of her designs ready to do their mischief. However, Daisy’s interpretation had more sinister connotations. Leaving the Christmas decorations in place could also result in a death in the community. Lighted candles in the home had to be extinguished with the sign of the cross, or the candle grew larger and larger, and the wick became a human head. The haunted candles walked through the house, shedding tears of wax, which took a year to clean up. Some rare variations of Daisy’s Candlemas designs had human head aureoles rather than flames. See them in the Art Deco gallery at WMODA.

Read more about Candlemas Day in the Fairyland Lustre collection

Candlemas Day – WMODA | Wiener Museum