Thunder Candles and Ginger Cookies: Reclaiming My Grandmother’s Light

My paternal grandmother was known for three things: her warm hugs, her ginger cookies, and her complicated relationship with where she came from. She was first-generation Slovak, born to immigrant parents, and she spent much of her life embarrassed by them, their accents, their old-country ways. She got teased. So even though she still cooked traditional Slovak foods like cabbage rolls, she never spoke the language to us, never taught us the folk traditions her parents would have known. What she passed down was ginger cookies and the best hugs you’ve ever felt.

Her birthday was in February. And I have a friend in Ontario, Canada, whose grandmother did pass on the old traditions, Slavic practices her maternal grandmother taught her. My friend tells me that in Ontario right now, there is absolutely no sign of spring. Just the Snow Moon, the traditional name for February’s full moon because this is when the heaviest snowfall comes. Just cold and white and waiting.

But something else happens in February. Something my friend’s grandmother taught her, and something my grandmother’s parents knew about, even if it never reached me directly.

On February 2nd, the old Slavic peoples celebrated Gromnica, the feast of the thunder candle. The name comes from grom, which means thunder. Families would bless thick beeswax candles on this day, then save them throughout the year for protection. You’d light one during fierce thunderstorms to guard your home from lightning. You’d light one during illness. You’d light one at births and deaths, those threshold moments when we most need the reassurance of sacred flame.

Gromnice "Thunder Candle"

This is the day when the goddess Dziewanna, protectress of wolves and wild animals, Mistress of the Wild Wood, begins her slow dance back toward spring. Some say this is when she and Marzanna (the death goddess of winter) start switching places, a transformation that won’t complete until the spring equinox. This is also Bear Day in the old traditions, when the bear emerges from hibernation to check for her shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter or the early arrival of spring. (Yes, our Groundhog Day comes from these ancient Slavic and Germanic bear traditions.)

The Christian church painted over these practices, as it often did, renaming the day “Matki Boskieg Gromnicznej”—the Festivity of the Holy Mother of the Thunder Candle. But underneath that veneer, the old knowing persists: that light grows even in the deepest cold. That we protect what is vulnerable—homes and travelers, wolves and wild things, the dying and the newborn. That transformation happens slowly, goddess by goddess, week by week, as winter loosens its grip.

I didn’t learn any of this from my grandmother directly. The thread was fragile, nearly broken. But here’s the beautiful part: in her seventies, my grandmother went back to Slovakia. She reconnected. It’s never too late to find your way home to what your people knew.

And I’m finding my way there now too. I’m learning about Gromnica from my friend whose grandmother kept the practice alive. I’m researching the traditions my grandmother’s parents would have known. And when I make ginger cookies in February, her recipe, her gift, I light a candle. Not just for nostalgia. But because this is the work of honoring: claiming both what was passed down (the cookies, the hugs, the Slovak foods, the love) and what was nearly lost (the language, the rituals, the sacred knowing).

This is the invitation I want to offer you: You don’t have to be Slovak to do this work. Most of us come from people who had complicated relationships with their heritage. Who got teased for their parents’ accents. Who lost the thread of their grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s practices somewhere along the way.

Ginger Cookies CC0

But February is a threshold month. The Snow Moon hangs full and bright. The bear checks for her shadow. The goddess of the wild wood begins her slow emergence. And we, too, can emerge from what was buried or forgotten.

Maybe you don’t know your people’s February traditions. Maybe they were lost, or never spoken aloud, or sit in that complicated space between shame and pride. That’s okay. You can light a candle anyway. You can bake the thing your grandmother was known for. You can honor what survived and grieve what didn’t. You can research and reclaim. You can hold space for both the silence and the sacred flame.

Not to appropriate someone else’s practice. But to find your way back to your own.

My grandmother gave me ginger cookies and good hugs. She went back to Slovakia in her seventies and reconnected with what she’d distanced herself from. That’s a powerful teaching: it’s never too late. And now I’m adding the thunder candle back in: her parents’ practice, my reclaimed inheritance. I’m lighting it for protection, yes. But also for remembering. For the slow transformation from winter to spring. For the wolves and the wild things and the growing light.

May you find what your people lost or set aside. May you honor what they kept. May you light your own candle against the February cold, knowing that spring is coming, slowly, goddess by goddess, bear by bear, cookie by cookie.

You are whole. You are here.