Christmas Eve: The Candle’s Rule

By Arian Galdini

On Christmas Eve, a single candle on the table sets the room in order, speech sheds its excess, and gesture goes first.

Shadows stay where they are, learning to hold their place, like people who finally understand that even silence has dignity.

Noise goes to the door and hangs there,

like a coat no one wears anymore,

while the light, small, patient, seeks faces, not eyes.

Christmas enters without triumph,

through things that seem unimportant, a broken match beside a plate that still finds a spark under a finger that will not yield.

Then a chair is pushed a little further out

so it will not stand empty, and a glass of water is placed before someone who has asked for nothing.

That’s where the miracle begins, pride loses its language, the heart finds the courage to sit, and forgiveness comes out without a sound, like a breath that only needs to be felt

for it to be believed.

The tablecloth lies smooth, with a small crease where a plate was moved, like a memory.

At one corner of the table, a name hangs in the throat and settles on the salt, under the tip of the tongue, as if it had finally come home.

There are nights when the light comes with weight, and your back feels it, as you sit straight in the chair, silent.

Light endures when it accepts its limit, the candle burns by making itself smaller, and the room, without ceremony, grows larger as it bows.

On this early evening hope is measured in things you can touch, in costs you can see.

The crumbs tell of a piece of bread left on the plate, the stain of wine tells of a glass

pushed toward someone else, the salt tells of a hand that cannot quite hide that it is giving.

Power craves the glare, this night asks for the crumb that stays in the corner of the plate.

There giving keeps its name.

And when a person chooses to become shelter, not center, they earn the light with their hands, with wax on their fingers, with a word chewed and kept, with a space held open for someone else.

Christmas Eve lights the candle as a test,

while outside there is still that half-breath of evening, when the city keeps its own lights

and the streets turn slowly toward the night.

And then, later, when the table has said all it can say without a sound, a small true moment arrives, the chair pushed back for someone, the plate left ready, and the flame settling under a gentle hand, as if a secret were being kept.

Tomorrow will carry the name Christmas.

Tonight, inside you, it begins as a place that stays warm.

And on the cloth, a drop of wax rests like a seal, and the smoke rises without haste,

while the early evening settles slowly at the windows.

This night asks for one warm place and one small, true word.