The Candle I Light in Winter

Every winter, when the air turns sharp and the world folds itself into silence, I perform a ritual I never speak about. It begins on the first night the temperature drops below freezing. I take out a single candle—thin, white, and unscented—and place it on the windowsill of my small bedroom. It is nothing special at first glance. But every year, the moment I light it, the room feels different, as though someone else steps inside with me.

I started the ritual when I was nine.

That year, winter was not gentle. It came crashing into my life the way unexpected things do—the kind that break routines and hearts at the same time. My grandmother, the warmest person I have ever known, passed away on a night the snow fell so heavily the world outside disappeared. The sky looked empty. The world looked empty. And for a long time, so did I.

She used to light candles in winter. Not for prayer, not for ceremony, not for anything official. She did it because she believed light behaved differently in the cold.

“Flames don’t just burn,” she told me, her hands guiding mine as she struck a match, “they remember.”

Those words stuck with me, though I didn’t understand them then.

After she was gone, that winter night felt too large and too quiet. My mother cried softly in the living room. My father paced the hall. I sat in my bedroom, small hands shaking, staring at the empty windowsill where my grandmother once placed her candles whenever she visited.

Without thinking, I searched through her old belongings—a scarf that still held her scent, a notebook filled with shaky handwriting, and at the bottom, a box of candles wrapped in tissue paper. I took one, carried it to my room, and lit it.

For the first time since she passed, I didn’t feel alone.

The candle became my winter ritual.

Every year I light it—same night, same place. And every year, something happens that I struggle to explain. The flame bends slightly to the right, just like it did when my grandmother cupped her hand around it to protect it from the draft. The shadows fall across the room in the same familiar shapes she used to make when she told stories—shapes of mountains and wolves and fire spirits. And sometimes, just sometimes, the wick burns with a faint golden ring around it, the same color as her wedding band.

I know it’s just a candle. I know it’s just fire.

But winter rituals are not meant to make logical sense.

They’re meant to hold the things we can’t let go of.

This year, winter arrived quietly. No storms, no chaos—just a cold wind slipping in under the door. I almost forgot it was the night. Life moves too quickly now. Work, bills, notifications, alarms—it’s easy to lose track of ritual. But something nudged me. A feeling. A whisper. Maybe a memory.

So, I lit the candle again.

The flame flickered softly, as though waking up from its own long sleep. The room warmed. Not physically—winter air still pressed against the glass—but emotionally. The warmth came from somewhere inside me, spreading slowly like the thaw of early spring.

I sat in front of the window for a long time, watching the world outside blur into shapes of white and gray. The candle burned steadily beside me. And as it always does, it brought the quiet kind of peace the rest of the year forgets to offer.

This ritual has changed over time. It’s no longer about grief. It’s about connection. About remembering that no matter how cold life becomes, there is always a small flame inside each of us waiting to be lit again.

Before I blew the candle out this year, I whispered the same words I whisper every winter:

“Thank you.”

Not to someone gone, but to the part of myself that survived loss, grew around it, and learned to carry warmth forward.

The flame dimmed. The wick glowed red for a heartbeat.

Then winter darkness returned to the room.

But I wasn’t afraid of it anymore.

Because I knew the ritual would bring the light back next year.