Enjoying some winter holiday warmth & charm while catching up on some writing, public-talk-troubleshooting, & other work tasks in my little office / sleeping room. I’m burning a red candle and a green candle. (See photo here for as long as the will of zucc shall allow.)
The gentle rainy day outside — we are getting an unusually wet dry season, which I welcome because I love rainy winter days –is a nice complement to the scene in my little room, where the red and the green candles in their glass jars burn against a backdrop of wintry-themed holiday cards and cookie tins and decorative bags.
The green candle on the left was purchased from Books and Reverie, a lovely woman-owned business on TikTok. Other candles I purchased years ago at thrift shops for $.50 or something.
I usually leave the decorative bags and cards that I use for Christmas decor, usually leave it up for a few days after Yule/Solstice/Christmas. Sometimes up until New Year.
Then it all folds compactly into a tightly lidded plastic tub. (Box made of plastic etc. rather than cardboard is particularly important for keeping the bugs away as I live in Florida and don’t use AC.)
(I seem to recall as a kid, that people would leave their Christmas trees & other holiday decor on display till January 2. After which it was considered bad luck to leave them up. Nowadays I often see trees and other holiday decorations at the curbside the day after, which I think is kind of sad. And possibly fuels the retail practice of starting in on the Valentine decorations right away.)
A word about candles from thrift stores. Over the years I have purchased some absolutely gorgeous candles never taken out of their packaging. I get them for $.25, $.50, a dollar. It seems likely to me that whoever purchased them knew kept putting off burning them because they were too pretty to burn. They probably paid 10 or $20 for them and then never burned them. Maybe even died without burning them, and then the candles got donated to thrift shops when the house was cleaned out. (I know a thing or two about house clean-out jobs; they have been a part of my occupational mix for some years.)
No, there’s nothing wrong with using candles just as decor and not burning them! But I have derived immense pleasure from burning the candles. A deep-green lifestyle version of “smoke em if you’ve got em.” This year I expanded to lighting candles and oil-lanterns out on the porch at night for passersby to enjoy.