"The Christmas Candle" is a determinedly retro-minded holiday saga that contains no foul language, gruesome violence indeed anything beyond the mildest suggestion of hanky-panky, and for a certain portion of the moviegoing public, these absences alone would be enough to warrant a recommendation. The trouble is that the filmmakers have also neglected to include such other elements as wit, style, energy or anything resembling a coherent narrative. The end result is the kind of vaguely distasteful Yuletide concoction that viewers normally find playing on cable channels that they don't even realize that they have.
Based on the book by Max Lucado, the film, set in 1890, begins as Reverend David Richmond (Hans Matheson), an idealistic man of God who has lost his faith, accepts a new position in Gladbury, a quaint little English town that appears to have been built from the remains of the sets from a road company of "Oliver." Upon his arrival, he learns the town's odd secret. It seem that every 25 years during the Christmas season, an angel arrives at the local candle shop, owned by the Haddington family for generations, in order to bless one of their candles so that the eventual recipient will receive a miracle after saying a prayer and lighting the candle.