The Christmas Candle (2013)

The movie The Christmas Candle opens with a premise so earnest it borders on parody: every 25 years, an angel visits a candlemaker's shop in a tiny English village and blesses a single candle. Whoever lights that candle on Christmas Eve gets one wish granted. No strings attached, no monkey's paw twist. Just pure, uncut Victorian faith. Directed by John Stephenson and released in 2013, this adaptation of Max Lucado's novel asks you to take its miracle at face value. How you respond to that request will determine everything about your experience with this film.

The Christmas Candle Cast and Characters

Hans Matheson plays David Richmond, a progressive young minister assigned to the fictional village of Gladbury in the 1890s. He's a man of reason in a town that runs on tradition. He wants to install electric lights. The villagers want their miracle candle. This is the central tension, and Matheson plays it with enough charm to keep you watching even when the script doesn't give him much to work with.

Samantha Barks, fresh off her role as Eponine in the 2012 film adaptation of Les Miserables, plays Emily Barstow, the local love interest. Barks has a warmth that carries her scenes, though the romance follows every beat you'd expect it to. Sylvester McCoy (yes, the seventh Doctor Who) appears as the aging candlemaker Haddington, and he brings exactly the kind of twinkling, grandfatherly gravity the role needs.

Then there's Susan Boyle. The Britain's Got Talent sensation makes her acting debut here in a small role as the church caretaker. She also sings on the soundtrack. Her presence is clearly a marketing decision, but she handles her scenes with quiet dignity.

Victorian England on a Budget

The film was shot on location in England, and the production design does its best to conjure a Dickensian Christmas. Thatched roofs, cobblestone streets, candlelit interiors. The problem is that everything feels just slightly too clean, too arranged. Real Victorian villages were muddy, smoky, and cramped. Gladbury looks like a Christmas card come to life, which is either the point or the problem, depending on your tolerance for period-drama polish.

The cinematography by David Connell captures some genuinely lovely images. Snow settling on a churchyard. Candlelight reflected in old glass. These moments work because they don't try too hard. When the film reaches for something grander, like its angel effects, the modest budget shows.

Faith, Reason, and a Familiar Debate

The Christmas Candle is, at its core, a faith-based film. It was produced by EchoLight Studios, a company founded by former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum specifically to make faith-friendly entertainment. The movie doesn't hide this. David Richmond's arc moves from skepticism toward belief, and the film never seriously entertains the possibility that the candle's miracles might have natural explanations.

If you're receptive to that worldview, the story delivers what it promises. If you're not, the third act will feel like it's lecturing you. The script, adapted by Eric Newman, doesn't have the nuance to make the faith-versus-reason conflict genuinely dramatic. Richmond's doubts dissolve too easily. The villagers' blind trust is never really challenged.

What saves the film from being purely a sermon is its setting. The 1890s were a real inflection point between tradition and modernity. Electric light was literally replacing candlelight. Placing a story about miracles in that specific moment is a smart choice, even if the screenplay doesn't explore it as deeply as it could.

Who Is This Movie For?

The Christmas Candle landed with a thud at the box office, earning roughly $2.4 million worldwide. Critics were largely unkind. But faith-based audiences found it on home video, and it's developed a small but loyal following among families looking for Christmas movies with explicitly Christian themes.

It's not a good film in the way that a critic would define "good." The pacing drags in the middle. The dialogue is sometimes wooden. The angel effects look like they belong in a 1990s TV special. But it has a sincerity that's hard to dismiss entirely. The cast is better than the material deserves, and the Victorian Christmas atmosphere, however sanitized, does create a mood.

For families who want a Christmas movie rooted in faith rather than Santa Claus, this fills a gap. Just don't expect it to challenge you. The candle grants wishes, the skeptic believes, and snow falls on cue. Sylvester McCoy's candlemaker, carefully dipping wicks by lamplight in his cluttered workshop, is the one image from this film that sticks. The rest melts away like wax.