Embers

When I was a little girl long, long ago (In the 50's. Gosh I'm old), we used to have wall calendars supplied by the local drugstore.  They were just chock-full of little tid-bits: lots of ads for St. Joseph baby aspirin, if I recall correctly, and little pictures of pharmacists in white jackets looking wise and fatherly.  And almost every day's square had something interesting.  If they couldn't find SOME sort of holiday, there would be a reminder of something you might want to put on your shopping list, but there were WAAAY more holidays than in the calendars I use now.

And several times a year, there would be a notation: Ember Day.  That sounded so interesting and mysterious; I often wondered what it meant.  I don't know if I asked my parents or just kept wondering.  No Google back then, of course, and it wasn't in the dictionary, so I just stayed ignorant.  I may have thought that the ones in the fall had something to do with burning leaves, but the other ones made no sense.  Somewhere along the way someone must have indicated it had some sort of religious overtone to it, but it remained hidden in mystery -- until today!

One of my friends kindly shared a link (which I am now sharing here) and now I know!!