Christmas Eve Candlelight Service: How to Plan It

A Christmas Eve candlelight service ends with worshippers holding flame or battery candles while the church sings Silent Night with the lights down. Allow about six minutes for the song and passing the flame. Before Christmas Eve, choose the candles, consult the fire marshal and rehearse the ushers’ movements with the lighting cues. Give each usher the printed card and put the candle instructions on screen.

For the whole service around it, with every reading and song, see the Christmas Eve order of service.

The candles

Buy short white candles with a paper drip guard, the round collar that catches wax before it reaches a hand. Church supply stores sell them in bulk boxes made for this service. Order one for every person you expect, counting from last year’s Christmas Eve attendance, and keep a box of spares at the back of each section for latecomers and for candles that break.

Buy battery candles for the families with small children and for anyone who asks. Hand them out at the door with no questions, and let the children keep them.

Order in October, so a wrong size or a short box can be fixed long before December 24.

Call the fire marshal

Fire codes set the rules for lit candles in a crowded room, and each state or city adopts its own version, often built on the International Fire Code. Washington’s adopted code puts the rule for worship this way: “Participants in religious ceremonies shall not be precluded from carrying hand-held candles.” The same section bans candles “in areas where occupants stand, or in an aisle or exit,” with an exception for candles used in religious ceremonies.

Your city may add conditions, so call the fire marshal’s office in November. Tell them the date, the number of people you expect, and how the flame will pass. Ask whether your occupancy permit covers it, whether an extinguisher must stand within a set distance, and whether lit candles may move down the aisles. Write down the name of the person you spoke to.

December is the peak month for home candle fires in the National Fire Protection Association’s count, and almost three times as many candle fires are reported on Christmas Day as on an average day. Three in five start when something that can burn is too close to the flame, which in a sanctuary means hair, scarves, coat sleeves, bulletins and hymnals.

Passing the flame

The flame starts at the Christ candle on the Advent wreath. As the pianist begins Silent Night, the ushers come forward, light their candles from the Christ candle, and walk to the front row of their sections. Each usher lights the candle of the person on the aisle, and that person turns and lights the next. The flame passes person to person down the row, and each row lights the row behind it.

Before the lights go down, explain how to pass the flame. The person with the unlit candle tips it to the lit one, and the lit candle stays upright to reduce wax spills. Put that instruction on the screen as the ushers come forward.

Light your candle from the Christ candle when the pastor gives the signal.

Walk to the front row of your section and light the candle of the person on the aisle.

Stand at the end of your rows and watch the flame pass. Help anyone whose candle goes out.

Watch for hair, sleeves, hymnals and paper near a flame. Speak to anyone tilting a lit candle.

On the screen: “Tip your unlit candle to the lit one”

On the screen: “Keep your lit candle upright”

On the screen: “Please blow out your candle”

Tip your unlit candleto the lit one

Keep your lit candleupright

Please blow outyour candle

Start the ushers during the piano introduction so the flame reaches the back rows before the last verse, and let the room sing the first verse with the house lights still half up. Bring the lights down as the rows fill, and leave the aisle and exit lights on.

The lights, the sound and the stream

Agree on the cue with the person on the light board in the run-through. Bring the house lights to half when the ushers stand, to the lowest safe level when the second verse begins, and back to full at the last chord. Keep the stage lit enough that the pianist can see the keys and the song leader can see the room.

If the church streams the service, lock the camera’s exposure before the lights go down. A camera left on automatic brightens the picture until a candlelit room looks gray and grainy on the stream.

Put the words of Silent Night in the printed program so people can sing by candlelight, or show them on the screen at low brightness. A screen at full brightness washes out the candles.

The song

Silent Night was first sung on Christmas Eve 1818, at St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria. Joseph Mohr, a young priest, wrote the German words, and Franz Xaver Gruber, a schoolteacher and organist, wrote the tune. The English words most American churches sing were published by John Freeman Young, an Episcopal priest in New York, in 1859, so they are in the public domain and free to print and project.

The Silent Night page in the hymn library has all three English verses, a song sheet and slides. Sing every verse, and ask the room to lift their candles on the last one.

Free tool you can try here

Put a hymn on the screen

Pick a public domain hymn and see the words as a slide. The real tool opens with that hymn first in your set.

This free tool is made by Church Posting.

Hymn Amazing GraceHoly, Holy, HolyIt Is Well with My SoulBlessed AssuranceThe Old Rugged CrossCome, Thou Fount of Every BlessingO Come, All Ye FaithfulO Come, O Come, EmmanuelHark! the Herald Angels SingJoy to the World

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,That saved a wretch like me!

Amazing Grace, verse 1. Public domain.

Use it free

The tool is free, and the hymn library has no license to buy because every text is public domain.

Ending the candlelight

At the last chord the pastor asks everyone to blow out their candles. Bring the house lights up at the same moment. Follow with Joy to the World, so the service ends loud and bright and nobody walks out holding a flame.

Ushers stand at every door with a bucket or a box for the used candles, and the children keep their battery ones.

Cleaning up the wax

Walk every row before the lights go off, and pick up dropped candles and drip guards. Let spilled wax cool and keep people away from it. Ask the custodian to follow the flooring or furniture manufacturer’s cleaning instructions, or arrange for a professional cleaner. Use heat, solvents or scraping tools only when the manufacturer approves them for that surface.

A checklist for the weeks before