A Stromberg Tradition

Christmas is a time of gathering with family and sharing memorable times. Every year my family attends the 11 o’clock Christmas Eve candle light service. It was December 24th 2001 and little did we know that this year’s Candle light service was going to be one of the most memorable nights ever.
For those of you who don’t know at the end of the candle light service you grab a candle, light it and stand by while you sing Silent Night, this is the story of the most exciting 3 verses of my life.

Verse 1- Silent Night, Holy Night, All is calm all is bright.

We grow quite as the candles begin to light and the first verse begins. We walk down the aisle collect our candle light it and file back into our pews. I was only 8 at the time and being super responsible it was my first year with my own candle, but the flam only lasted a few minutes and went out.

Verse 2-Silent Night, Holy Night, Sheppard Quake at the sight.

My mom takes priority and decides to light a itinerary and then transfer the flam to mine. She leans over and lights the itinerary from my dad’s candle. Unexpectedly the paper goes up in flames faster then she can react. Protecting herself she drops the fire ball on my sister’s fake fur coat.

Verse 3- Silent night, Holy night, Son of God, Love’s Pure Light
The coat immediately catches fire and my whole family reacts by stomping on the coat over and over again. At this point we forgot about being discrete and had caught the attention of the people around us. The fire finally went out and the lights came on. As we surveyed the damage we had mixed emotions, we were sad yet couldn’t help to chuckle. There was a pretty significant black spot on the rug and my sister’s coat looked like road kill touched will gas then lit on fire.

We never attended another candle light service at the same place. Actually we left that church about 2 months later. Now every Christmas Eve we have to retell the story of our own Christmas miracle.