Candles

You would think we were still living in the Middle Ages.

Candles — rendered obsolete in 1879 with Edison's invention of the lightbulb — are still being given out for graduation presents, baby showers, bar mitzvahs, interventions and parole hearings. They arrive wrapped in mylar-fabric-type bags. They squat in nests of crinkly, crumply opaque paper. They come to us topped with little bows. They sport stickers touting their irrelevant birthplaces.

Things have gotten out of hand. For God's sake... look in your ears and look no further. We are being had.

Candles have infested every decent establishment around, from Pottery Barn to Crate and Barrel; from IKEA to Target; from Virgin Megastore to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater. The candle has become the everyman's easy gift choice in a sea of much better alternatives. And when some rich guy's wife has nothing better to do than start her own business — why not start her own candle shop?

Somewhere out there, in some lyrically calm, nature-infested location, there are candle technicians hard at work to one-up themselves and their competitors within the candle industry by creating unique scents and shapes. You've seen some of their output already: Candles come in a cornucopia of scents. There's rose, ocean, lily.... red pomegranate, white gardenia, dark blue sea, lime green cucumber, yellow pear, pineapple cilantro, orange cranberry, angel food, roasting chestnuts, fresh pumpkin and so much more. Never before has a nonfood industry strived to make its items as close to food as it could. We all know double-bacon cheeseburger and hummus with rice are not far off.

Shapes are another story altogether. The candle industry, in what must have at once seemed like a sane idea, decided that the only way to one-up itself and continue making a killing on hardened, colored wax was to make its products bigger, stronger, faster, and... well, bionic. They made their candles bionic.

And for the low, low price of $128 dollars, you, too can have a candle the size of your car's front bumper.

Choice: It's what the candle industry prides itself on.

Thus, even the emotional impact of the traditional taper has become endangered. Romance has been bolstered for decades by the marriage of "wax and love"; it was once all that anyone desired of candles. With "waxnicians" cooking up increasingly absurd new scents and sizes, candles have gone from the simple, tasteful backdrop of a romantic evening to outlandishly campy props.

And just as the worldwide community has been fooled that "a diamond is forever," while companies like DeBeers quietly sock away the excess diamonds to stimulate demand, so, too has the wax industry artificially boosted the price of its product. By denoting the candle as the "gift of choice" for those cheap gift-givers who like to pick up your gift on the way to your birthday dinner — they have ensnared a large portion of the public with their variety of colors and sizes. They have trapped all of you people.

You. Are. Buying. Wax.

— Paul Davidson (paulseth@earthlink.net)