Candelaria

I am a godmother many times over, as godparents are created for every occasion for every fiesta here in Mexico. We often laugh, because there are padrinos, or godparents, for barbequed sheep and for musical group and for crystal goblets and for cake, and we joke that there must be godparents for Styrofoam plates and cups as well. Part of the purpose of so many godparents is to help cover the inevitably high costs of fiestas for baptisms, communions, 3rd birthdays, 15th birthdays, weddings, and golden anniversaries, all the major milestone fiestas that mark the cycle of life here. And the other purpose is to create connections, to invite community to bear witness to your life cycles, to support one another and share life. In any one of the major fiestas, there are principle godparents who accompany the honorees at mass, serving more in the traditional role in which we imagine them, as guidance and witness to the promises we make, the steps we take, in front of the divine presence. When you become a godparent, you are bound forever to those you’ve helped out – you become compadres to each other, co-parents so to speak. Greetings in the streets of the village are often followed by the familiar “Compadre,” or “Comadre!,” all of us linked together over the years by community parenting, witnessing, serving, and heck, just paying for the sheep since the poor folks throwing the party weren’t able to.

One of my duties as madrina that I most honor and cherish is my service to the Niño Dios, a delicate little porcelain figure of the baby Jesus that a cleaning lady once gave to my mother-in-law as a gift. The tradition is that when you receive one of these figures, you must find a godmother to take care of it for 3 years, someone who will clothe it each year for Candlemas on February 2. My three years of madrina duty to my Niño Dios godson have long since run out, but I keep wanting to serve him, so every year on Feb. 1, I wrap him in a blanket and go out to the market and choose new clothes. The first year, you’re supposed to dress him like a newborn baby, since he’s new, and lay him in a little basket-style bassinet. The second year, you can dress him as you choose, and the choices are awe-inspiring. There are whole markets dedicated to Niño Dios clothing that open up in the days before Candlemas. The second year, the figure should be seated in a little throne-like chair to indicate he’s grown up enough now to sit. The third year, he can be dressed per personal preference again, and can now stand, gently tied with a gold ribbon to a cross, because he’s now big enough to walk, but also now carries the allusion to his destiny on the cross. Every year on Christmas Eve, the Niño’s clothes are removed to receive him once again in his nascent state, and rock him, cradle him in arms once again. And every year, with his new shiny clothes carefully stitched on again, he is taken to mass on Feb. 2 for a year’s worth of blessings.

The Niño Dios market is magical. It is filled with women reliving childhood play, cradling their dolls, tugging tiny socks and shoes onto porcelain feet, sticking arms into little lacy undergarments. Traditionally the clothes should be a miniature style of some aspect of an apparition of Christ, but clothes extend to those of many other saints as well. Many choose clothing related to specific prayers they are working on. For example, illness in the family might indicate the need to dress the Niño as a doctor. Poverty might make a family choose to dress the Niño as the Christ of the Grapes, a symbol of abundance. Over the years, I have chosen el Niño de las Palomas (Doves), el Sagrado Corazon (Sacred Heart), Juan Diego, and el Divino Redentor (the Divine Redeemer), all depending on what spoke to me and my process at the time.

Candelaria, or Candlemas, is globally celebrated in the church as a time when the year’s supply of candles are blessed (hence the name, Candle Mass – a mass held in honor of the candles, the Light), but the tradition of the Niño Dios seems to be an adaptation of the holiday’s symbolism that it unique to Mexico. Because Candlemas is a holiday much older than the Catholic church, as most holidays are, it’s symbolism is ancient and deep. It was celebrated as Imbolc (In the Belly) or Oimelc (Ewe’s Milk) in Celtic times. It is the holy day that falls exactly at the midpoint between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, when the sheep’s milk would come in, when the fetuses were growing in the wombs of the animals who would give birth come Spring. It was a day that marked the promise of the return of light in the dark of mid-Winter. It was a time of incubation, of the silent waiting of gestation, of knowing that beneath the frozen snow-covered land lay tiny seeds patiently waiting for the ground to soften and thaw for their growth to begin. It was a time of having faith that light would persevere through the long darkness.

The holy day in the Celtic tradition honors the goddess Brigid, or Bride, the Mother. The Catholic Church morphed all the “Mother” associations of Candlemas into the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, when Mary would have finished her 40 days of post-partum “quarantine” and, now purified, could bring her newborn baby out into the world. It might be interesting to you that the “quarantena” 40 day period is still observed here in Mexico after a woman gives birth. Newborns are rarely taken outside the house, new mothers rarely leave the house and follow strict diets in their purification process, and many mothers take a postpartum herbal sweat to release whatever needs shedding from pregnancy and labor. So the Niño Dios tradition follows suit – naked newborn baby received at Christmas, newly dressed baby presented to the world for blessings 40 days later after Mama is purified and ready to roll.

And of course, the Niño Dios, the baby, is no different than the seed, the promise of light, the milk of the sheep, the gestation, the corn dollies made for Brigid. They all ask us the same question – in this quiet cold dark place, what are you dreaming? What are you incubating? What are you growing? What promise have you made? What godchild will you bear witness to, will you support and raise up right? What seeds have you planted and how will you care for them, making sure they keep on reaching for the light?