MY GRANDMOTHER’S GRANDMOTHER'S
CHRISTMAS CANDLE. |

HERE were no Christmas celebrations in my old Puritan
home in Swansea, such as we have in all New England
homes to-day. No church bells rung out in the darkening
December air; there were no children’s carols learned in Sun-
day-schools; no presents, and not even a sprig of box, ivy, or
pine in any window. Yet there was one curious custom in the
old town that made Christmas Eve in many homes the merriest
in the year.

It was the burning of the Christmas candle; and of this
old, forgotten custom of provincial towns I have an odd
story to tell.

The Christmas candle? You may never have heard of it.
You may fancy that it was some beautiful image in wax, or like
an altar-light. This was not the case. It was a candle contain-
ing a quill filled with gunpowder, and its burning excited an
intense interest while we waited for the expected explosion.

‘I well remember Dipping-Candle Day; it was a very inter-
esting day to me in my girlhood, because it was then that the
Christmas candle was dipped.

It usually came in the fall, in the short, lonesome days of
November, just before the new schoolmaster opened the winter
term of the school.

My grandmother brought down from the garret her candle-
rods and poles. The candle-rods were light sticks of elder,