(This would be good for a Blue Christmas Service)

The Candle

Ah no, this is not really a Christmas story. It is not really a story
either, it is an account, a plain account of something that happened
somewhere. But it is not present day news which is what most reporting is
about. This thing happened more than thirty years ago, but what does that
matter? After all, the Christmas story, the real Christmas story, was not
actually a story as such, and it is now old news too, around about two
thousand years old. What then are thirty years here or there?

Furthermore, there is even a remarkable similarity, even though you might
find it a bit far-fetched. The old Christmas story took place in a stall.
The one that happened thirty years ago was also in a stall. Well, not a
proper stall, but it looked like one. It was a dark, gloomy shed. Inside it
was always half-light or darkness, but outside the light shone bright and
glorious by day, and even at night it was still light outside, for the shed
was in a tropical region under a glowing burning sun, as well as under a
wonderful starry sky, and the moon seemed much bigger than here. People
lived in the shed. "Lived" is expressing it rather strongly. They were
housed in it, because a little further off the sun or the moonlight sparkled
from the barbed wire where it had not rusted in the course of years. For by
now it had lasted years; or was it perhaps centuries? We could not tell
anymore. We were too tired and too sick and too weak to think about it, to
count up the hours and the days. We had done that in the beginning, but that
was long since past. We were much more concerned with eternity than with the
day or the hour. Because so many were dying, beside us, opposite us, from
hunger, dysentery and other tropical diseases; or simply because they did
not want to live any more, their last spark of hope had been extinguished.
We did try a bit to keep going in that concentration camp. We did not really
know anymore why. For a long time we no longer believe that the war would
end and that we would be liberated. We went on living out of force of habit,
numbed and deadened, and with one great desire that now and again leapt at
your throat like a wild beast: and that was to eat, eat no matter what. But
there was nothing to eat, we were being systematically starved. Once in a
while someone would catch a snake or a rat. But just forget it, no one who
has survived it wants to talk about it.

There was one man in that camp who still possessed something to eat. A
candle. A plain wax candle. Of course he had not bought it originally or
kept it just to eat it. A normal person does not eat candle-fat, although
they say that the Cossacks used to be very fond of it. In any case it is
fat, and that you must not underestimate, when all you see around you are
starved bodies and you know yourself to be one of them.

When the torture of hunger became beyond bearing he would take out the
candle which he kept well hidden in a little dented tin box and he would
nibble at it, but he did not eat it. He regarded the candle as the last
resort. As soon as everyone should go mad with hunger (and that would not be
long now) he was going to eat the candle up. I hope you don't find that
insane or gruesome. I, who was his friend, found it quite normal at the
time. Besides, he had promised me a bit of the candle. It became my life's
task, my constant care, to watch out that he should not eat the candle all
by himself after all. I kept watch and spied on him and his tin box day and
night. Perhaps I remained alive because I had such an important task to
carry out.

Now, all of a sudden, we discovered that it was Christmas. Quite by chance
someone found out after some lengthy calculations made from little nicks and
notches cut in a plank. He told it to everyone and added in a rather flat
and expressionless tone of voice, "Next year, we'll be home for Christmas."
We nodded or made no comment at all. We had heard that now for several
years. But there were a few who held fast to the idea. After all, you never
knew.

Then someone spoke, perhaps not with any particular intention, but perhaps
on purpose after all - I never really found out: "At Christmas the candles
are burning and the bells are ringing."

That was a strange thing to say. It sounded as a faint hardly audible sound
from a great distance, from long ago, something completely unreal.
And I must say that the remark simply went past most of us, it just did not
have anything to do with us, it spoke of something quite outside our
existence, but it had the strangest and most unexpected consequences.
When it had grown late in the evening and everyone more or less lain down on
the boards with his own thoughts or actually, quite without thoughts, my
friend became restless. He groped for his box and brought the candle out. I
could see it very well in the gloom, the white candle. "He'll eat it up," I
thought, "Will he remember me?" and I looked at him through my eyelashes. He
set the candle on his plank bed and I saw him disappear outside to where a
little fire was smoldering. He came back with a burning stick. Like a ghost
that little flame wandered through the hut till he got back to his place
again. Then the strange thing happened: he took the burning stick, that
flame, and he lit the candle.

The candle stood on his bed and was burning.

I do not know how everyone noticed it right away, but it was not long before
one shadow after another drifted over, half naked fellows, whose ribs you
could count, with hollow cheeks and burning, hungered eyes.
In the silence they made a ring around the burning candle.

Bit by bit they came forward, those naked men, and the minister and the
priest. You could not see that they were minister and priest, they were just
pieces of starved skeleton, but we happened to know that they were.
The priest said, in a croaking voice: "It is Christmas. The light shines in
the darkness."

Then the minister said: "And the darkness overcame it not."
That, if I remember rightly, comes from St John's Gospel. You can find it in
the Bible, but that night, round that candle, it was no written word of long
ago. It was the living reality, a message for the moment and for us, for
each one of us.

Because the Light did shine in the darkness. And the darkness did not
overwhelm it. We could not then reason it out, but it was what we felt,
gathered silently around that candle light.

There was something extraordinary about it. The candle was whiter and more
slender than I ever saw one later in the world of people. And the flame. It
was a candle flame that reached to the sky and in the flame we saw things
that were not of this world. I cannot describe it. None of us who are still
alive can. It was a mystery. A mystery between Christ and ourselves. For we
knew then quite certainly that it was him, that he was living among us and
for us. We sang in silence, we prayed without a word, and then I heard the
bells beginning to ring and a choir of angels intoning their songs. Yes, I
know that for a fact, and I have a good hundred witnesses, of whom the
greater part can no longer speak, they are no longer here. Nevertheless they
know. Out there, deep in the swamps and the jungle, sublime angelic voices
sang Christmas carols to us, and we heard the chimes of a thousand bells. It
was a mystery where it came from. The candle burned taller and taller and
more elongated, till it reached the highest part of the high dark shed and
then right through it, right up to the stars, and everything became
incandescent with light. So much light nobody ever saw again. And we felt
ourselves uplifted and free and knew hunger no more. The candle had not just
fed my friend and me; no, the candle had fed us all and made us stronger.
There was no end to the light.

And when someone said softly: "Next Christmas we'll be home," then we
believed it implicitly this time. For the light proclaimed it to us, it was
written in the candle flame in fiery letters; you can believe me or not, but
I saw it myself. The candle burned all night. There is no candle in the
world that can burn so high and so long.

When it was morning there were a few who sang. That had never happened in
any year before. The candle had saved the lives of many, for now we knew
that it was worthwhile going on, wherever it might lead, but somewhere in
the end a home was waiting for us all. That's how it was.

Some went home before Christmas the following year. They are back in life
now in Holland. But they find the candles on our trees are small, much too
small. They have seen a greater light, one that is always burning. Most of
the others had also gone home before it was Christmas again; I myself helped
to lay them in the earth behind our camp, a dry spot between the swamps. But
when they died their eyes were not as dull as before. That was the light
from the strange candle. The light that the darkness had not overcome.

Submitted by
Rev. Jane Fry
Chatswood South Uniting Church
Pacific Highway
Artarmon NSW 2064
janefry@BIGPOND.COM