My youngest daughter presents me with a handmade little candle for an early Christmas gift. She tells me how, in school, she took a piece of yarn, dipped it in different colored jars of wax, cooled that layer in cold water, and then dipped it again to build up layers and layers of wax around her yarn. It was part of a craft for her Colonial unit tea party. 
She dangles it before my eyes. It’s crooked and strange looking, and I’m not sure it will even work as a candle. But we light it together.
It works!
We sit in its soft glow in the middle of the day, and she reminds me how long it took to make, how careful she was, how she just knew I would love it because I love candles so much, and how maybe we could make more candles for her birthday party in May.
We sit together in the kitchen as the candle burns down, and I think of mothers and daughters from Colonial days all the way until this very moment who sat in the kitchen and talked like this by candles they made themselves.
It was a lovely little present for Christmas.