Today is my birthday, and looking at those candles, lit and full with light I couldn't help but explore what the symbol of Birthday Candles could represent.

Traditionally Light represents a person's life, a person's mortality. Human life truly is just as fragile as fire and can be put out just as easily - and one's "light" can go out forever.

...but...

Why would we traditionally remind someone of their mortality on the anniversary of their birth? Don't we celebrate a person's birth... not their inevitable death?

But that still leaves the question... why Candles? Perhaps it has to do with the wax the candles are made of. In history, Wax itself was commonly used to seal letters, being malleable enough to hold a family crest/symbol as a type of return address. Today we commonly see wax in tourist attractions known as Wax Museums where artists have constructed Movie Monsters and Celebrities out of wax, capturing their youth - a moment in time, passed. The common thread is History. Do we use candles to remind us our past, to remind us of all the years of our own personal history in order to reevaluate where we've come from and make adequate revisions to the way we live our lives in order to redirect ourselves and be better prepared for our future? ...but the only unavoidable future we all share is death - which brings us back to the fire lit atop the candles.


How about you? What is your own interpretation of why we traditionally use Candles to top our Birthday Cakes? I'm -not- looking for someone to do a web search for the history of the birthday candle, I'm looking for your own scholarly exploration of this question. You don't need to define a specific answer, sometimes the exploration is more important than the answers. Comment with your responses!