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An ode to the glow of a safe, albeit fake, fire SANDRA SNYDER WALL TO WALL

Saturday January 09, 2010 | 12:00 AM

Embrace flameless candles. In this, the high season for resolutions, that’s one of mine. Soul-searching, world-changing or spiritually nourishing it’s not, but it might be life-affirming, especially considering the back story behind resolution No. 2, which is: Be smarter, you bonehead.

We begin as night falls on an otherwise festive, fun and incident-free Dec. 25 celebration at home. Maybe it didn’t go off exactly as I sometimes envision, i.e., how it often goes off in the movies: visitors passing through the freshly fallen snow toward the big wraparound porch of a charmingly bedecked four-square, kicking off their shoes in the long hallway before assembling around the roaring fire, then making merry with the come-from-all-over company that constitutes a classic Christmas.

But it did go off fairly well, as in the guests represented a good mix of friends and relations, and I managed not to ruin the fancy, annual splurge that was the tenderloin roast and beloved centerpiece dish. And we certainly did have a roaring fire.

Which was precisely the problem.

So this is how it happened: I set up a two-tiered Christmas house: adults upstairs, with nice nibbles, real stemware, candles and such, and kids down, with a TV, video games, a computer, chalk, chalkboard wall. But things don’t always go as planned, and kids don’t always stay where they’re expected to, especially when the boys outnumber the girls by about 6 to 1. So a wrestling match went awry and a couple of the kids emerged from the basement and, in animated fashion, somehow kicked a wax candle into the fireplace, where a log was already burning, and the next thing you know …

Someone highly doubted this bucket of hooey, and rightfully so, because the only truth in the above is there was a wrestling match, but it stayed in the basement. Just thought I’d try out a tall tale as suggested by a guest who witnessed what really happened:

I, happy homeowner who now holds herself up as a dire warning, failed to remove a fat, four-wicked wax candle from the corner of the fireplace before inserting and lighting the log, which burned peacefully and prettily for four hours before taking an ugly turn.

By ugly, I mean the log proved itself a needy attention-seeker that, at twilight, just had to become better acquainted with the coy little candle in the corner, which may or may not have had something to do with me inserting a second log, only encouraging the dangerous liaison. Also, maybe I brushed off a comment or two about the rapid orange growth.

All I know for sure is that the room was getting crazy hot and the flames crazy big, and when some wax started leaking out the fireplace doors, it was evident there could soon be hell to pay for my mistake. Good thing for fire extinguishers and previous homeowners who left them there.

Worse things, indeed, could have happened than that every smoke alarm in the house went off and every window had to be opened upon the frozen night and some guests had to be evacuated to the porch temporarily. That some latent idiocy on my part was now fully, irrevocably revealed was another small price. Kind guests tried to bolster me, noting they saw the candle but didn’t exactly point out the potential gathering storm.

“Best Christmas ever,” said my friend Tom, an insurance adjustor up on his odds. Sure, I could have burned the place down, he said, but my chances there were only 1 in 2.

Truth stretched, message received. And lessons learned, plenty of them. I promise. Some gas-insert catalogs are in the mail.

About the Author

Sandra Snyder covers Features for the Times Leader. Reach her at (570) 831-7383 or ssnyder@timesleader.com.

Sandra Snyder is the Times Leader's features editor, overseeing the food, family, home and Sunday lifestyles sections as well as the weekly entertainment Guide. She began working at the Times Leader in 1993 as a copy editor and has held various positions, including Hazleton editor/bureau chief, editor of the Times Leader-Mountaintop and Social Issues co-team leader. She also has done general-interest news and features reporting. Her most memorable interview to this day remains the delightful and now decidedly not 16-going-on-17 Charmian Carr, a.k.a. Liesl in "The Sound of Music." These days, she encourages readers who love (and sometimes despise) their homes to write to her and share their household tales, tragic or otherwise, particularly the type they're willing to have retold in print.