English folk custom long held that any Christmas greenery, holly, ivy and other evergreen decoration, left up in the house past Candlemas would bring misfortune in the year ahead, a belief recorded in seventeenth century verse, including Robert Herrick's poem instructing that the greenery be taken down by Candlemas Eve and replaced with the fresh box or other greenery appropriate to the new season, evidence that a firm folk deadline for de-decorating after Christmas existed in England centuries before it became a matter of personal preference.
That custom reflects Candlemas's original role as the formal closing point of the Christmas and Epiphany season at its fortieth day, and although the specific belief about misfortune from lingering greenery has faded from most people's practical calendar, the broader idea that Christmas decorations should come down by early February rather than being left up indefinitely still shapes ordinary household habits in Britain and some other countries today, a faint but traceable survival of a liturgical deadline in entirely secular domestic practice.
In Mexico and other parts of Latin America, Candlemas, kept there as Dia de la Candelaria, is linked to the Twelfth Night cake eaten at Epiphany: whoever finds the small figurine of the infant Christ baked inside the rosca de reyes is traditionally obliged to host a Candlemas gathering on 2 February and provide tamales for the assembled family and friends, a chain of obligation running from one feast to the next that has no equivalent in the English candle-blessing and greenery customs described above.