Who brought peace into my life this year?
December 18 is the week's celebration night. For three days, everyone has been noticing the people and the good that helped make things whole this year. Tonight the third candle is lit from the second, everyone reads the gold ornaments with their own name on the front, and the household plans three days of giving peace. Plan on about 40 minutes, with dinner wherever it fits.
Remember: light the third candle from the second.
Rejoice: the Opening. Everyone reads the gold ornaments written to them.
Ready: the Plan for December 19 to 21.
Lighting the Candles
Supplies: the Generosity and Hope candles, a third candle for Peace, and a long-neck lighter (or the tins or battery candles you chose).
Instructions:
The light your household started on December 4 has been passed along once already. Tonight it reaches a third candle. Before you light it, read this to the kids:
Read to the kids: This week our family has been talking about peace. Peace means everything is the way it should be: nothing missing and nothing broken. When two people stop fighting and make up, that's peace. When someone who was sick gets better, that's peace. Tonight we light a candle for peace, and peace gets added to our answer. Then we find out who in our house thanked us for bringing some.
Turn the room lights down. A grown-up leads each line, and everyone says it back. On "Grace comes in," relight the Generosity candle, then the Hope candle. On "Passed along," tilt the Peace candle's wick into the Hope candle's flame until it catches, and set it where everyone will gather to read. With tins or battery candles, light or switch on each one in the same order. Everyone can do the hand motions in parentheses, but they're optional.
Grown-up: Grace comes in. (Cup both hands, palms up.)
All: Grace comes in.Grown-up: Gratitude sees it. (Point to your eyes.)
All: Gratitude sees it.Grown-up: And graciousness passes it on. (Open your hands toward the new candle.)
All: And graciousness passes it on.Grown-up: What do we pass on?
All: Generosity, hope, and peace.Grown-up: One light.
All: One light.Grown-up: Passed along. (Light the Peace candle.)
All: Passed along.
Alternative Liturgy: Ancient Light Version
For families who want it, these words can replace the ones above. Relight the first two candles without words, then light the Peace candle while a grown-up or an older kid reads:
Reader: On December 10 we heard about Zechariah, the old priest who couldn't talk until his son was born. When his voice came back, he sang about a light coming like the sunrise, "to guide our feet into the path of peace."
All: One light, passed along.
Kids: let a child turn off the lights, or choose where the Peace candle stands.
The Opening
Supplies: the gold ornaments on the tree, and each person's stocking if you're keeping them there.
Instructions:
On December 15, everyone wrote a gold ornament for each other person in the house, thanking them for a gift of peace this year: an apology, a forgiveness, a push in the right direction, a reminder that everything would be okay. Those notes have faced the wall for three days, and tonight they turn around.
Each person goes to the tree, finds the gold ornaments with their own name on the front, takes them down, and brings them to the candle. Take turns reading them out loud, one at a time. When you finish one, look at the person who wrote it and say thank you. Anyone may read theirs privately instead, and someone sits beside each child who can't read yet and reads theirs to them.
Some notes may name a hard moment from the year, like a fight that ended in a sorry. Something broke, someone helped mend it, and tonight that person gets thanked for it.
The red and white ornaments stay on the tree. The gold ones now belong to whoever's name is on them, so put them in that person's stocking to keep.
Kids: let the youngest find their name first. Spotting it on the tree is half the fun.
The Plan
Supplies: a pen and the Plan page or a sticky note.
Instructions:
Three days of receiving peace turn into three days of giving it. A grown-up says, "You are invited to pass the light along." Then write three lines together:
Time (December 19): Who is facing a hard night, and when can you give them an hour?
Resources (December 20): Who could you hand a small peace offering to, maybe someone you've had words with, and what will you give? For suggested organizations, see the facilitation notes on Day 6.
Words (December 21): What relationship could use a mending word, and who will say it?
A plan only has to be good enough to follow. Put it where everyone will see it in the morning.
Kids: a child can suggest a name for any line, or draw the person instead of writing.
Optional. Add it if your family wants more tonight, or skip it.
Breaking Bread for Peace. On Christmas Eve in Poland, and in neighboring countries such as Lithuania and Slovakia, many families begin the evening meal with a custom that goes back centuries. Before anyone eats, everyone gets a paper-thin wafer made of flour and water, often pressed with a Christmas picture, called an opłatek (oh-PWAH-tek). Each person goes around the table to every other person. You break a small piece off their wafer, they break a piece off yours, and you offer each other a wish for the coming year. It's also the moment for a sorry, or for letting one go, and families who have been at odds can use it to make up. Families keep the custom because it starts the holiday with everyone at the table united and at peace with each other.
Breaking bread this way acts out what this week has been about: making things whole between people, one piece at a time. At home, any bread you can break works the same way.
Supplies: one flatbread or large cracker per person: pita, tortillas, naan, matzo, or the real wafers if a Polish grocery near you sells them. Any version counts.
Instructions: Everyone holds their bread. Go to each person in turn, break a piece off their bread, and give them a wish ("I hope next year you ___") or a word of forgiveness ("I'm sorry for ___" or "I forgive you for ___"). Then they break a piece off yours and do the same. Eat the pieces as you go.
Kids: a five-year-old can do the wish version. A grown-up can go first with a sorry, so the kids see how it's done.
Didn't plan ahead? Any bread or crackers from the pantry work, even a single slice torn into pieces.
Kids' story: read "The Third Candle" from The Overflow Adventure in Wanderful Woods together. The story's candle words differ a little from ours, and either set works.
Time: about 40 minutes: 5 for the candles, 15 to 20 for the Opening, and 10 to 15 for the Plan. Breaking bread adds about 10. Dinner fits anywhere around them.
Short on time? Light the candles, read the ornaments, and write only tomorrow's Time line. The other two lines can wait until morning.
Leading the words: an older kid can lead the Grown-up lines.
Didn't plan ahead? Any candle in the house can be the Peace candle tonight.
Stay safe: the Resources and Words lines are for ordinary rifts. Peace never means reaching toward someone who has harmed you.
Hello, my wonderful story friends! Last time, Bruno roared “PEACE!” and ended up arguing with a hill, and then Benji’s quiet little truth fixed what all the roaring couldn’t. Tonight is a Celebrate night, and a third candle is waiting by the fire.
Have you ever had something that stayed steady, even when everything around it got wobbly? Let’s go see the third candle.
The night was clear and very cold, and the stars over Sunny Square looked sharp, like tiny pieces of ice. The giant snow lantern from yesterday still stood in the middle of the square, glowing through all its little gaps.
And by the fire, on their flat stone, two candles were burning: the first light and the second, each in a fresh candle Mama Moose had lit from the old one before it burned down.
Next to them stood a third candle. It wasn’t out in the open like the others. Ricky had found it a home: another clear jar from his river collection, round and thick, with a little ring of smooth stones around the bottom to keep it steady.
“I keep finding jars,” said Ricky proudly. “The river just gives them to me.”
Everybody gathered close. Hazel was so excited she couldn’t stand still. She tried. She stood very still on all four legs. Then one ear twitched. Then her tail swished. Then one hoof tapped, tik-tik-tik, all by itself.
“Hazel,” said Mr. Monkey, “your hoof is dancing.”
“I’m not doing it!” said Hazel. “It’s doing it by itself!”
“Hee hee hee… SNORT!” she added, and all four hooves started tapping at once.
“Hee hee hee!” went Mr. Monkey.
Mama Monkey held out a twig. “The first light was for the light we got, given away,” she said. “The second was for the light that keeps us walking. Tonight, the third one comes from the second. This one’s for the light that holds steady.”
Mr. Monkey took the twig and touched it to the second candle. Then, carefully, carefully, he carried the little flame over to the jar and reached down inside it and lit the third candle.
It caught. And it didn’t flicker at all. Inside its thick glass jar, behind its ring of stones, it just stood there, straight and gold and still.
Mr. Monkey looked at the third candle, standing so straight. “I bet I can be that steady,” he said. He climbed up on a log, stood on one foot, put his arms straight up over his head like a flame, and held very still.
He wobbled. He wobbled more. He fell off the log into the snow.
“Hee hee hee! Candles are hard!” he said.
So then everybody tried. Bruno stood on one foot and tipped over sideways, very slowly, like a falling tree. Sammy couldn’t even get started, because Sammy had never stood still in her whole life. Hazel’s hooves started dancing again. Ricky lasted the longest, until his nose itched.
But Tessie didn’t move at all. Not one bit. She sat perfectly still in the snow by the fire, for so long that everybody stopped trying and turned to look at her.
“Tessie wins,” said Mr. Moose. “She’s the steadiest.”
Tessie didn’t answer. Everybody leaned closer. And from inside her shell came a very small, very slow sound. Zzzzz… zzzzz…
“She’s asleep,” whispered Benji.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Mr. Moose, very softly, and they let her sleep until the candles were ready.
“Now,” said Mama Monkey, “the gold circles.”
Everybody went to the little green pine by the Moose home’s door and found the circles with their own faces on them.
Daddy Moose turned his over and saw the night the light went out on the ridge, and himself at the table relighting it, and all the little leaf-shaped lights coming back on. He didn’t say anything. He just reached over and rested his big chin on top of Mr. Moose’s head for a moment.
Mama Monkey found the broken bowl, glued back together. “Oh,” she said. “I’d forgotten all about that bowl.” And she laughed and hugged Mr. Monkey and kissed him on the ear.
Shiloh found a red circle with his own curly face on it. When he turned it over and saw the windy ridge, and the little sheep at the back pointing up, he hid his whole face in his wool.
Mr. Moose found one with a moose face on the front. The moose had a big gold nose. He turned it over, and there were two friends at a table, and one paint pot, sitting very still in the middle.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Mr. Moose. “My golden nose!”
“It’s still a little gold,” said Mr. Monkey, looking closely.
It was. Just on the very tip.
Everybody settled down around the fire. It was warm. The three candles burned side by side. The giant snow lantern glowed. And way up at the top of Everest’s cliff, the little light shone steady too.
Bruno looked at all of it. Everybody he loved, all together. All the lights. All the warm. And he felt so happy and so full that it all came out at once in one great big happy sigh.
“HAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH.”
It was the biggest sigh in the history of Wanderful Woods. It blew across the fire. It blew across the flat stone. And fff, fff, it blew out the first candle and the second candle, just like that.
Everybody gasped.
Bruno’s eyes went wide. “Oops! Are they okay?”
Mr. Monkey’s heart jumped. The first two candles were just two little curls of smoke now. The first light and the second light, gone.
But the third candle didn’t even notice.
Inside its jar, behind its ring of stones, the third candle was still burning. Straight and gold and still. Bruno’s sigh had gone right over it.
Mr. Monkey looked at the third candle. Then at the two dark ones. He didn’t have to run anywhere. He didn’t have to climb anything. The light was right there.
“Mr. Moose!” he said. “The third one’s still lit!”
“Then we light them again,” said Mr. Moose. “From the third one.”
Mr. Moose held the twig steady between his teeth, and Mr. Monkey lowered it into the jar until it caught. Then they carried the little flame back, slowly, and lit the second candle. And from the second candle, the first.
Three lights again.
Ricky stood up. “I have a joke,” he said. “Why was the candle so sleepy? It was all burned… out.”
Nobody laughed. The candles flickered. Ricky looked very pleased.
“Haw haw haw,” went Bruno, very quietly, from behind his paws, because he was still a little embarrassed. “Sorry, candles.”
“That’s why we have three,” said Mama Moose, and she patted Bruno’s big arm.
Then Tessie woke up, and cleared her throat, very slowly.
“In three nights,” she said, “comes the longest night of the whole year.”
Everybody turned to look at her.
“The sun goes down early… and it comes up late. And in between… it’s dark for a long… long… time.” Tessie looked at the three candles. “But after the longest night… the days start getting longer again. Every day… a little more light.”
Mr. Moose looked up at the cliff. At the little light, burning at the very top, beside Everest. One candle, all alone up there, in the dark. He thought about how long the longest night would be.
“Mr. Monkey,” he said quietly. “Will the light at the top last all through the longest night?”
Mr. Monkey looked up too. He didn’t know.
“We’ll keep them lit,” said Mr. Monkey. “All of them. The ones down here. The one up there. The whole woods. All night.”
“All night,” said Mr. Moose.
Then everybody had berry pie, and Bruno ate his very carefully, and didn’t sigh even once. He held it in so long that his cheeks puffed out like two snowballs.
“What a day!” said Mr. Monkey. “Ricky found another jar. Hazel’s hooves danced by themselves. I lit the third candle from the second one, and Mr. Moose got his golden nose circle. Then Bruno sighed so big he blew out the first two candles. But the third one stayed lit, so we lit them all again. And the longest night is coming.”
Mr. Monkey whistled, and Mr. Moose hummed, and together they sang:
We are better together,
Moose and Monkey forever.
And by the fire in Sunny Square, three candles burned side by side in the cold, the newest one standing straightest of all inside its jar.