a simple little finnish tradition during christmas time is making ice lanterns.

the weather has to be between -10 and -20 °C before you can even start to think about doing this, although the temperature will vary upon the size of lantern you hope to create (the colder the weather, the larger the lantern).

what happens around our house is my dad has these old plastic buckets, either from bulk motor oil or laundry detergent, that carry about 20 gallons. you simply fill them up with water and leave them outside when the temperature is in the right range.

what will happen is that over a period of a few hours, the water will partially freeze, with the unfrozen water settling to the bottom and centre. this means that the top and the sides will freeze. all you have to do then is carefully turn the bucket upside-down and then empty out the unfrozen water (it helps to do this with gloves and rubber boots inside, especially if you need to pour a little water on the overturned bucket to free the ice. then you place a candle inside the new ice lantern and bring it outside.

over the period of a few cold nights, you can easily generate enough lanterns to arrange them along a walkway or path, lighting them when you expect visitors. the ice doesn't properly shield any lit candles from the wind, so you will expect a few to go out.

this year, it wasn't sufficiently cold enough in thunder bay to pull this off, but a few came out all right. as you can see, there wasn't a lot of snow either, making the other tradition of making a snowball lantern a bit difficult. nonetheless, a beautiful effect, especially in the long dusk of winter.