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My Late Fathers Novelty Christmas Candles

ByKevin Simon

Nov 6, 2016

Novelty Christmas candles

My late father at Christmas aswell as decorating the outside of the house with Christmas lights he also had a large novelty Christmas candle display. To see more further info about the Christmas light see my other article HERE.

I am now going through the collection of the Christmas candles to put on sale, it made me remember about these displays so this article is about my memories of these displays.

From what I can remember he started doing these displays about 30 years ago. He started doing these displays as seen a Christmas display in a shop somewhere, he brought a few for display at home on a little side unit if I remember right and then the following year he brought a large box of novelty Christmas candles from a carboot and like any collection it started from there with adding more and more.

The displays grew from being on one display unit to the whole of the back wall in the living room and also the one alcove by the fire place the other side. He even run out of room on these and even had them on a shelf above the bay window. So basically at the end the whole living room was a massive candle display as well as the Christmas tree 🙂

I remember one year around mid 90’s my dad got people to guess how many candles there was, each person paid a £1 or 50p and the person who guess closest the the total number got a tin of chocolates and the money raised went to the Samaritans. If I remember right at this time there was over 3500 candles.

When my parents went away if my father seen any Christmas candles he would get some, so there were some from Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Menorca etc. He also use to get them as gifts from friends and family.

My father did these displays upto around 10 years ago he stopped doing them because of ill health, as as you can see from the photos these would take a good few days to put up and he just couldn’t manage it any more. I would say the last display he did there must have been over 4000 candles as over the years some had melted or faded so they either got pushed to the back or not put up.

Our Novelty Candles on eBay
Our Novelty Candles on eBay

None of the candles were ever lit, the only novelty candle that was ever lit, but this is really going before my father did these displays was an advent candle that you would light and counted down the days to Christmas. Though don’t think this was lit permanently. It is amazing what you remember from your childhood all those years ago.

Since then the candles have just been stored in the loft, Now we are going through these for sale which is on ebay, see the link below for full details as I am doing them in lots so will take us a while to sort then out.

My father had great pleasure in doing these display and all family and friend loved them, really the same as the outside Christmas lights displays. I have taken on tradition of decorating my house with the outside lights, but unfortunately I haven’t carried on this tradition as I do model village Christmas scenes so don’t have the room for both.

So far it has been great remember this even after going through just one large box of these novelty Christmas candles and reluctantly we are selling them as we don’t do the displays and would like these to get a new home where they would be appreciated as much as we did.

The collection that you can see in the photos below are ones that I had taken in approx the mid 90’s, probably around the time of the completion mentioned above.

The following ones my father had taken and as you can see from the main display there is a year of 1999, so I assume they are from that year.

Sorry about the quality of the photos as they were taken with basic film cameras and scanned into the computer, if I find more of different years I will add them.

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By Kevin Simon

I run this blog & also self employed cleaning out fish ponds, but due to spinal problems not able to do as much, now started a youtube channel showing my converted Peugeot Partner micro camper also as interest in photography so now vlog about the trips and of course Lego figures out in the wild photos.

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