By Maria Khell

As the darkness grows outside, I love to light candles in my home. Our little daughter has recently become fascinated with a beautiful set of candles in small jewel-toned metal pots, received as an anniversary gift. She busies herself sorting them, stacking them, hiding them in boxes, giving them to me over and over to smell the fragrances that escape from within. Seeing her treasure them, I find myself thinking about how much joy they also evoke for me. I love everything about candles: the atmosphere they create, the way they release aromas as they burn, the sense of connection to the past, the charming way they seem vibrantly alive and dancing, the reality that they are domestic yet have latent power.

Also, at this time of year, particularly during the magical hours of the day when it stays half-light, it becomes especially delightful to walk around the neighbourhood. It’s the time when people turn on their lamps but leave their curtains open to catch all the available light, and indoor scenes becomes evident. An old man dreaming in a tall armchair. Parents preparing food as children play nearby. A woman watering a profusion of plants. A little girl choosing a book on a shelf. The same houses that I have passed a hundred times, seemingly closed-off and aloof, become suddenly incandescent and revelatory in the dark. Seeing the gentle warmth and liveliness of other people’s homes is often an encouraging reminder that many good things hide quietly all around. I love seeing the radiance emitted from the everyday lives of others. It also makes me wonder how the light in my own home is perceived from outside.

Shadow Lands

I’ve been reflecting on why this concurrence of light and darkness is so resonant for me. There’s certainly a natural explanation for it.

In Scotland, my native country, it gets dark in winter. Not lightless like the arctic circle with its months of endless night, but very dark, nonetheless. I spent some years in New York, and the comparative experience of winters there struck me in two ways: the intensified cold, and the increased light. The biting outdoor air was the starkest cold I had ever encountered. It was much colder than in Scotland, which took me by surprise, and yet I experienced that the houses in New York were generally warmer. People also proved better at dressing practically for the season than my fellow Scots! I discovered more effective ways to ward off the bitter chill, which increased my tolerance for lingering outdoors, and created some memories that I relish. For the first time in my life, with my own eyes I saw the perfectly formed frozen crystals of snowflakes. Usually in Scotland, snowflakes partially melt as they fall, so that when it snows, mostly watery clumps of ice land in a sludge on the ground. In New York when the snow fell and lay piled a few feet high, I could see millions of intact crystal snowflakes glittering all colours in the sun. The sharp cold weather fashioned many things that were a wonder to me.

I was also surprised each year by the brightness of the winter there – the daylight never diminished as much as I was expecting, and to me it felt like winter had not yet fully taken hold. In the deepest winter months in my home country, it is dark in the morning when school and work begin, and already dark again before office hours are over. The sun can stay behind dense grey cloud-cover for weeks, making it hard to pinpoint where the pale solar disc is hiding in the sky. The short winter days are dark even when it’s daylight.

There’s a bright side to being immersed each year in a long season of gloom. The well-known Scandinavian concept of “hygge” has a lesser-known Scottish counterpart, “seasgair,” describing the coziness that we instinctively yearn to gather around us in those months. The word might not be well known, but I’m sure that the concept of a Scottish autumn or winter will conjure vivid images. A crackling fire in a stone hearth, a thick tartan woolen blanket, a sheepskin rug on a wooden floor, an amber glass of warming whiskey.

Consciously or otherwise, I have been shaped by the visceral experience of longing for warmth and light in winter, and tend to gravitate towards things that exude good cheer. The experience of seasonal darkness feels like a long tunnel that can only be travelled by the well-prepared. It has surely given me a particular gratitude for the light that accompanies us in the darkness.

Sacramental Imagination

I’m certainly not alone in appreciating candles. The world is enamored of candlelight, especially now that this form of illumination is chosen for its beauty more than its necessity. It’s for good reason that candles are still one of the most common go-to gifts for all occasions. They are a basic prop for creating atmosphere, and a safe resort as a meaningful gesture. Even people who don’t have a habit of prayer will offer to go into a church to light a candle for someone in a time of need. Equally appropriate for humble homes and extravagant establishments, candles are both every-day and mystical. They remind us of romantic restaurants, lavish festivities, exquisite cathedrals, just as easily as dusty cottages, isolated watch-posts, weary travelers with lanterns.

They are also one of the most tangible ways that my home reveals itself to me as a domestic church, a mystery within a mystery.

I love entering a room and seeing that my husband has lit a candle, or that he has set a novena candle to burn beside an icon, as it means he has just been praying. The effect on my spirit is immediate – just as some actions have the power to throw a heavy shadow over the home, candles lit for prayer pour a beam of light into the family space, spiritually as well as physically.

Candles used for prayer are recognized sacramentals of the church: objects that are sacred signs, along with others like rosaries, crucifixes, holy water, anointing oils. They symbolize the offering of prayers, and it’s a fitting image that the prayers of people are an energy that illumines the world.

I discovered a wonderful detail some years ago in a book on the Liturgy, and it forever changed how I perceive candles in church. Aside from their aesthetics and ancient utility, one reason candles are lit upon the altar at Mass is to remind us of the angelic presence. After discovering that, in my mind’s eye, candles became personified as sentinel angels keeping watch upon the altar.

There are clearly spiritual influences that contribute to my love of these little flames. They nudge me to treasure and guard the lights of faith and love that have been given to me, and to offer that spark to others who need it.

Tending the Beacons

As cold and darkness begin to stretch out their fingers gradually and silently now, most of us have a barrage of little defenses ready against the niggling onslaughts of the cold season. Tea and hot chocolate. Soup and roast dinners. Spiced fragrances and flavors. Blankets and socks. Fairy lights. Fireworks. Sparklers. Lanterns. Candles.

The seasons that come and go are fragments of bigger patterns. Times of shadow and cooling periods in the spiritual life are as inevitable as the cycles of nature. It’s true on a personal level, and on a wider societal scale. Christ counsels us to read the signs of the times, and the signals in our world are clear. The shift of culture away from the illuminating, life-giving love of Jesus is often palpable.

However, it’s also a time when interior lights will shine the brightest and can give the greatest consolation. Scripture often uses images of light juxtaposed with darkness to convey this.

We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. (2 Peter 1:19)

Keeping a light alive takes care and preparation, and the Gospels and the Church remind us of this. One of Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s ‘14 Rules for the Discernment of Spirits’ advises that we should expect to fall into times of darkness in the spiritual life, and before we are in the thick of it, we must “prepare for the desolation that is to come.”

Just like cherished traditions and customs that are triggered as the physical seasons change, it’s necessary to have a store of favored spiritual practices, especially those we can nurture within the sanctuary of home. We become inventive in extreme physical conditions, but we have as much agency to counter the ravaging effects of the spiritual seasons as we do to ward off the harmful effects of chill airs and gloomy days.

When it’s spiritually darkest, it’s time to go to the saints and those who have suffered well in the past through hard times. Those who went through the most difficult trials and came out the other side surely understand things we need to know, and they carry a spark of flame that can re-ignite us.

Perhaps I love candles most of all because of the whispered promise from these little tongues of fire. The candle is not a substitute for the dawn, but it’s a taste of it: a small flicker of a greater flame. There is a light promised to us that is so immense that our darkest fears and dreads will one day disappear without a memory of the cold shadows. Candles speak to deep longings on many levels, and awaken in me a desire to have a spiritually-alive home, full of light and glowing joy, most especially during encounters with exterior darkness and cold. A seraphic glow that stands confidently in the presence of God, a vigil lamp kept lit and waiting for the returning Lord, and a shining sign of what we love and live for.

 Maria Khell is a wife, mother and writer who lives in Belgium.