The Tradition We Almost Forgot

Every year, on the first cold evening of winter, my grandmother lit a single candle in the middle of the kitchen table.

No decorations.

No music.

No announcements.

Just one small flame, steady and patient.

When I was a child, I never questioned it. Traditions don’t ask for explanations when you’re young. You simply follow them, the way you follow footsteps in fresh snow.

We would gather around the table—my parents, my siblings, sometimes an uncle or aunt if they happened to be visiting. My grandmother would place the candle down carefully, as if it were something fragile, and then she would sit.

No one was allowed to speak until she did.

That was the rule.

When she finally broke the silence, she always said the same thing:

“Tell me one thing you carried with you this year.”

As a child, my answers were simple.

“I carried my schoolbag.”

“I carried my bike.”

“I carried my favorite book.”

She would smile every time, as if those answers were enough.

As I grew older, my answers changed.

“I carried stress.”

“I carried responsibility.”

“I carried mistakes.”

Still, she listened the same way—quietly, without interrupting, without correcting.

After everyone had spoken, she would blow out the candle and say:

“Good. Then you can put it down now.”

That was it.

That was the entire tradition.

No photos.

No social media posts.

No big family feast afterward.

Just a candle, a question, and the permission to let go.

When my grandmother passed away, the tradition disappeared without anyone deciding to end it. Life moved forward. People got busy. Winters came and went without candles or questions.

At first, I didn’t notice.

It wasn’t until years later, on a cold evening much like those from my childhood, that the absence finally made itself known.

I was home for the holidays, sitting at the same kitchen table—older now, heavier in ways I couldn’t explain. The house felt quieter than I remembered. Smaller.

I opened a drawer looking for something unrelated and found a box of old candles.

The same kind my grandmother used.

Something in my chest tightened.

That night, without telling anyone, I lit a candle and placed it in the center of the table.

My family looked at me with confusion.

“What’s that for?” my father asked.

I swallowed.

“For… something we used to do.”

They exchanged glances, then slowly sat down.

I realized in that moment how fragile traditions are. They don’t survive automatically. They need someone to remember them. To choose them again.

I took a breath and asked the question my grandmother had asked for decades:

“What is one thing you carried this year?”

There was a long pause.

Then my mother spoke.

“I carried worry,” she said quietly.

My brother followed.

“I carried expectations that weren’t mine.”

My father hesitated before saying,

“I carried regret.”

The candle flickered gently between us.

When it was my turn, I surprised myself by answering honestly.

“I carried things I never talked about.”

No one reacted. No one rushed to fill the silence.

For the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe at that table.

When everyone had spoken, I blew out the candle and repeated my grandmother’s words:

“Good. Then you can put it down now.”

No one laughed.

No one dismissed it.

Instead, my mother reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

That night, I understood something my grandmother had known all along:

Traditions aren’t about repetition.

They’re about intention.

They remind us to pause when the world tells us to rush.

To listen when silence feels uncomfortable.

To acknowledge what we carry before it becomes too heavy.

We’ve kept the tradition alive since then. Not perfectly. Not every year. But often enough.

Sometimes the answers are light.

Sometimes they’re painful.

But the candle always burns the same—steady, patient, forgiving.

And every time we blow it out, I feel her presence in the quiet that follows.

Not as a memory frozen in the past, but as something still living.

A tradition worth carrying forward.