Once again we have candles in our windows to celebrate and bring light to the season of the longest nights.
I’ve written before about loving this particular aspect of the coming holidays. Between candles in the windows and lights on the tree, I could spend hours just sitting with a good book or a journal, or even with nothing at all but my thoughts, feelings, and memories.
I find it very easy to get lost in the flicker of a flame. Sometimes, I fall even deeper into a reverie when the flame holds eerily still for just enough time to lose track of all time.
Fire
Speaking of loving the flame, I also respect it. I realize just how powerful it is: full of the power to enlighten and also full of power to destroy and lay waste.
I’m reminded of that by the deeply unsettling knowledge that a good friend of mine and her kids were forced to evacuate their home in Southern California again within the past day or so due to uncontrolled wildfire known as the Bond Fire.
I say ‘again’ because they were also evacuated over a month ago as a result of a different wildfire.
There’s a lot going on in so many people’s lives. We all need each other more than ever now.
One of our favorite Christmas decorations through the years is having candles in all the windows of our home. I grew up with candles in our windows at Christmas. (And no, I’m not so old that we used actual candles! Don’t be smart!) But they did require being plugged in, and in an old stone farmhouse with few electrical outlets, that meant a real hassle of extension cords and overloaded sockets. It also meant screwing each and every light bulb in each night and unscrewing them in the morning.
A couple years ago, I discovered battery-operated Christmas candles. What a boon! Not only do they have LED lights that burn brighter on the side you direct outward and softer on the side that faces indoors, but the bulb burns for six hours straight once it’s initially screwed in. It automatically turns off at the end of six hours, then turns itself back on 18 hours later, and burns another six hours. Day after day.
If you don’t like when they come on, you simply re-set them by unscrewing and screwing the bulb back in.
Waiting Them Out
Now, though, is when we enter the sad stage. The lights in the windows are dwindling as the LEDs growing dimmer. Night by night, they’re burning ever softer. Their once almost blindingly bright lights are barely visible from the road. Some have sipped every last drop of battery juice and now stand dark and sad. Others keep chugging along, their batteries causing the lights to burn at a gentle, almost pale orange glow.
The funny thing is, it’s now almost mid-February and I am definitely ready to put the candles away for the year. But I don’t want to put them away with the batteries still in the candles. Obviously that wouldn’t be good for a couple of reasons, not least being that the batteries are almost dead and they’ll get all mucked up if we stick them in the attic for the off season.
Nope. These candles are almost ‘done’ and we just need to wait them out.
Which leads me to my current situation. Our house looks like a shaggy dog. Or as if people can’t make up their mind whether to kill the Christmas decorations for the year or keep them until we hit Easter.
And that wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate. I’ll leave them up as long as it takes to drain the last bit of juice out of every single battery.
A Metaphor
I’m guessing we could read this as a metaphor for life. But I don’t know what the point of it would be.
Some lives seem to use up their batteries more quickly than others. Some keep hanging on, lighting up for longer than anyone could have reasonably anticipated. Dimming, but still doing their thing, still providing a hedge against the utter darkness of the night. Still providing us with just enough light to make us smile and feel a little bit warmer as they catch our attention.
I’m ready to put them to sleep in the attic. But I don’t have the heart to just put them away without using up every drop of energy in every single battery I use. So I’m waiting them out.
