Christingle

Common card · No. 226996

A Christingle is a symbolic object used in the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany services of many Protestant denominations. It symbolises the birth of Christ, the Light of the World. A modern Christingle is made from a candle in an orange (representing the light and the world respectively) which is typically decorated with a red ribbon and sweets or dried fruit. It originated in Moravian Church in the middle of the 18th century and has been a feature in Moravian churches across the United Kingdom since before the World Wars. As members of Moravian churches moved away from their home congregations, they took the custom of Christingles with them and introduced it to other denominations. In the 1960s John Pensom adopted it as a fundraising tool for the Children's Society of the Church of England.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Andy / Andrew Fogg from near Cambridge, UK, CC BY 2.0