38 
House & Garden 
THE CANDLE IN THE WINDOW 
Some Reasons Why the Police of Boston and Other 
Candle-Lighting Cities Never Sleep on Christmas Eve 
F OR the past few years now Boston has turned Christmas Eve 
into a Feast of Lights. It has become a custom, municipal wide, 
to place a candle or candles in the windows of one’s home. You 
find it done elaborately with golden candelabra along Common¬ 
wealth Avenue, you find it done no less beautifully and joyously in 
the slattern tenements of the North End with its penny candles 
stuck in bottles. So widespread has become this display that the 
local fire department passes a sleepless night on Christmas Eve. 
Nevertheless, it is a goodly custom, cheerful, symbolic of the season 
and delightfully romantic (quite in the mode, in fact) because it 
originated in Russia. 
It is said that in old Russia both peasants and lords alike used to 
place lights in their windows on Christmas Eve. Being orthodox 
folk, they thought that perhaps the Virgin and Joseph, again search¬ 
ing for the inn, might pass that way. The candle would light their 
passing and give them good cheer. That much of the custom has 
Boston adopted. 
But the Russians went further. Perchance, they said, this holy 
pair will not find the inn, consequently let us leave the front door 
unlocked. Seeing the light in the window, they may try the door. 
Finding the door unlatched, they may come in. Thereafter this 
house and all who dwell in it will be blessed! 
Of course it would be expecting too much of Boston, or any 
modern city for that matter, to go totally unlocked on Christmas 
Eve. Not only would the fire department have a sleepless night, 
but the police department as well. It is sufficiently beautiful and 
significant for a city with a Puritan heritage so to forget its ancestry 
as, on one night of the year at least, to expose its heart boldly and 
unashamed. 
I N doing this, Boston has contributed generously to the right atti¬ 
tude toward Christmas. For celebrating Christmas, in addition 
to doing a number of other things, affords an opportunity to expose 
one’s heart with impunity. Even the most conservative and 
straight-laced must break bonds that day; even the most self- 
centered must leap out of one’s self. The practise of exchanging 
gifts, the business of hanging a holly wreath on the front door and 
placing a candle in the window, the custom of sitting down to feast 
expansively, are all phases of exposing that tender side which 
modern commerce, modern society and the general hectic manner 
in which we work, play and have our being, declare shall not be 
brought forth either for common exercise or public gaze. 
Any goodly custom, even that of placing a Christmas candle in 
the window, is a symbol in which some past spiritual experience of 
the race is crystallized and by which it is handed down. These 
experiences may run counter to the life of the day, and yet, when 
they are recalled and symbolized by the custom, contemporary life 
accepts them without question. What manifestation of a Great 
Heart this candle-lighting symbolizes need not be discussed here, 
but the manner of its acceptance makes an illuminating commentarv 
on the life of today. It bites deep into our everyday world. 
For three hundred and sixtv-four days of the year Business says, 
“Be critical—-accept nothing!” Society says, “Be fastidious—accept 
no one!” These are the counsels of its perfection, the traditional 
formulae for its success. On the three hundred and sixty-fifth, the 
world abruptly turns about face, defies its own traditions, rejects 
its own counsels. It discovers that what it has called success is not 
genuine reality, that the road to attainment lies not along a fas¬ 
tidiously critical and guarded path but through the rough and 
common heart of the world. It acknowledges, on one day at least, 
that the things of the heart are things of authentic and abundant 
consequence. 
'T^HE most permanent and active manifestation of the heart is 
J- the home. In his slow and arduous climb up from the primi¬ 
tive, man has gradually evolved this idea of having a place where 
the young are protected and trained, where the weak are guarded, 
where the old and weary may rest. He has fashioned a habitation 
where he can practise his ideals unmolested. And so we have the 
amazing spectacle of men coming home from business—which has 
naught to do with the heart—and forthwith slipping into the 
things of the heart the way they slip into an old and easy coat. 
Let defeat arrest their progress, and they flee to the home for 
courage. Let worry assail them, and they lock the front door 
against it. Let disillusionment come, and they go back home to 
start all over again. 
These two forces are arrayed against each other—-on one side 
the world, on the other the home and the things of the heart for 
which the home stands. The front door, the porch, the curtained 
window, the busy kitchen, the nursery upstairs, the hearth down¬ 
stairs, the rose in the garden, the vine on the arch, the flowering 
bush beside the gate—-all champion the things of the heart. These 
persist when others falter and fail utterly. The quality of the 
eternal is in them. They bear the heritage of the undefeated. 
Like a beleaguered city the home watches its gates, scrutinizes 
those who pass them. Its enemy, the vast world, lies outside. Days 
come, days go. The truce seems never ending. Then, on one night 
of the year, the forces of the home make a sudden sally into the 
world. From every point are debouched these strange and potent 
warriors of the heart. They swarm over the plains of the world— 
and the world succumbs! 
The signal for the beginning of this great fight is a candle set in a 
window—here a candle in a candlestick of gold, there a penny 
candle stuck in a bottle. Seeing it, the world knows that the in¬ 
exorable warfare has commenced. 
And that, if you must know, is the real reason why the police of 
Boston and other candle-lighting cities never dare sleep on Christ¬ 
mas Eve. That is why the firemen stand by their engines. 
