Candle

When she was 8 years old, Evelyn Espinoza sold bubble gum and other candy door-to-door in her Los Angeles neighborhood to earn money. By sixth grade, her mom was buying the enterprising 12-year-old toys at a wholesale mart to resell at school. Now 17, Espinoza is still hard at work.

For setting a mood of warmth and romance, nothing beats a candlelit table. But assembling the mix-and-match candlestick centerpieces that are in vogue these days may be the cause of some heartburn. Fortunately, designer Matt Carr has done the heavy lifting and arranging. His Mixalabra for Umbra's U + collection consists of nine elaborately turned individual candle holders of varying heights mounted on a platter to create one solid piece that is silver-plated for extra dining room dazzle.

John HUGHES hasn't set foot in Hollywood for years, but his influence has never been more potent. The king of 1980s comedy, Hughes now qualifies as something of a Howard Hughes-style recluse -- he doesn't have an agent, doesn't give interviews and lives far away, somewhere in Chicago's sprawling North Shore suburbs where most of his films were set.

RECENTLY, a shocking thing happened to me. I was asked out on a date. Not a coffee meeting, but an actual date. You know, one of those things where a man you don't know very well picks you up at your house and takes you to dinner? "He's picking you up? At your house?!" A friend asked, incredulous. "I didn't know men did that anymore." "Me neither!" I replied. "It's kind of exciting." "It's like my fantasy," she said.

"BABY'S Day Out," "Mr. Mom" and "Curly Sue" are all films written and/or directed by John Hughes. But make no mistake: They are not the films of John Hughes. Not by the standards of those who came of age amid the rise of the high-fashion leg warmer.

TO most of us, candles are simply a finishing touch -- a bit of wax and a wick to create the kind of mood enhancement that, until recently, electric light could not hope to equal. But to the candle industry, which sold about $2 billion worth of pillars, votives, tapers, floaters and other candle styles last year, the increased popularity of this ancient item raises safety issues.

When the saints go marching down the production line at Richard Alceda's factory in Pomona, they're filled with hot wax and a white wick. The Bright Glow Candle Co. plant daily turns out 80,000 glass-encased prayer candles, the vast majority of which carry labels showing Roman Catholic saints and other religious figures. Commonly referred to as novena candles, they are sometimes used when praying for special favors.

IN MINSK, WHERE THE buildings are gray, the weather dour and the architecture Stalinist monumental, the lights and colors of dissent are challenging the last dictatorship in Europe. On the 16th of every month, thousands of citizens in the capital and other parts of Belarus turn off their lights at 8 p.m. and light candles as a symbol of freedom and democracy.

Kathy Higgins has holiday candles in her living room. They're on windowsills. They're next to beds and in both bathrooms. They're on the dining room table, the buffet table and the coffee table. This is the season for candles with a third of annual sales coming during a two-month period capped by the Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year's holidays. But the $2-billion candle industry, which enjoyed its heyday in the 1990s, has shown signs of maturing in recent years.

From England, land of Charles Dickens, the wassail bowl and figgy pudding, come two TV movies imported for your pre-Christmas pleasure by BBC America. One tends toward the ridiculous, the other the sublime. The first is not bad, and the second is very good.