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General
Candle Info | TeaLight CandlesHere are ideas for using tea lights, votives, tapers, and pillars — along with Real Simple's picks in each category.
Tea Light Candles
These little lights come in aluminum or plastic cups, so they're ready to burn straight out of the box or bag.
Where to Use: Refill candelabras and sconces with them, or line them up to illuminate a bookshelf or a windowsill. When birthday candles are nowhere to be found, substitute a few tea lights and place them on the dessert plate as a festive alternative.
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Category:
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Candle Info
Candle Making | What are Candles?A candle is a light source usually consisting of an internal wick which rises through the center of a column of solid fuel. Prior to the mid 19th century, the majority of candles were tallow (a byproduct of beef fat rendering). The fuel now is nearly always some form of wax, with paraffin wax being the most common. Soy and vegetable-based candles are also available, however.
Prior to the candle being ignited, the wick is saturated with the fuel in its solid form. The heat of the match or other flame being used to light the candle first melts and then vaporizes a small amount of the fuel. Once vaporized, the fuel combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form a flame. This flame then provides sufficient heat to keep the candle burning via a self-sustaining chain of events: the heat of the flame melts the top of the mass of solid fuel, the liquified fuel then moves upward through the wick via capillary action, and the liquified fuel is then vaporized to burn within the candle's flame.
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Candle Info | Paschal CandlesThe blessing of the "paschal candle", which is a column of wax of exceptional size, usually fixed in a great candlestick specially destined for that purpose, is a notable feature of the service on Holy Saturday. The blessing is performed by the deacon, wearing a white dalmatic. A long Eucharistic prayer, the "Præconium paschali" or "Exultet", is chanted by him, and in the course of this chanting the candle is first ornamented with five grains of incense and then lighted with the newly blessed fire. At a later stage in the service, during the blessing of the font, the same candle is plunged three times into the water with the words: Descendat in hanc plenitudinem fontis virtus Spiritus Sancti" (May the power of the Holy Spirit come down into the fulness of this fountain). From Holy Saturday until Ascension Day the paschal candle is left with its candlestick in the sanctuary, standing upon the Gospel side of the altar, and it is lighted during high Mass and solemn Vespers on Sundays. It is extinguished after the Gospel on Ascension Day and is then removed.
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Candle Info | Altar CandlesFor mystical reasons the Church prescribes that the candles used at Mass and at other liturgical functions be made of beeswax (luminaria cerea. - Missale Rom., De Defectibus, X, I; Cong. Sac. Rites, 4 September, 1875). The pure wax extracted by bees from flowers symbolizes the pure flesh of Christ received from His Virgin Mother, the wick signifies the soul of Christ, and the flame represents His divinity. Although the two latter properties are found in all kinds of candles, the first is proper of beeswax candles only. It is, however, not necessary that they be made of beeswax without any admixture. The paschal candle and the two candles used at Mass should be made ex cera apum saltem in maxima parte, but the other candles in majori vel notabili quantitate ex eadem cera
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Candle Info | Advent CandlesThe word candle (candela, from candeo, to burn) was introduced into the English language as an ecclesiastical term, probably as early as the eighth century. It was known in classical times and dennoted any kind of taper in which a wick, not uncommonly made of a strip of papyrus, was encased in wax or animal fat. We need not shrink from admitting that candles, like incense and lustral water, were commonly employed in pagan worship and in the rites paid to the dead. But the Church from a very early period took them into her service, just as she adopted many other things indifferent in themselves, which seemed proper to enhance the splendour of religious ceremonial. We must not forget that most of these adjuncts to worship, like music, lights, perfumes, ablutions, floral decorations, canopies, fans, screens, bells, vestments, etc. were not identified with any idolatrous cult in particular; they were common to almost all cults. They are, in fact, part of the natural language of mystical expression, and such things belong quite as much to secular ceremonial as they do to religion. The salute of an assigned number of guns, a tribute which is paid by a warship to the flag of a foreign power, is just as much or as little worthy to be described as superstitious as the display of an assigned number of candles upon the altar at high Mass. The carrying of tapers figures among the marks of respect prescribed to be shown to the highest dignitaries of the Roman Empire in the "Notitia Dignitatum Imperii". It is highly probable that the candles which were borne from a very early period before the pope or the bishop when he went in procession to the sanctuary, or which attended the transport of the book of the Gospels to the ambo or pulpit from which the deacon read, were nothing more than an adaptation of this secular practice.
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