Ireland
In Ireland “on Twelve Eve in Christmas, they use to set up as high as they can a sieve of oats, and in it a dozen of candles set round, and in the centre one larger, all lighted. This in memory of our Saviour and his Apostles, light of the world.”—Sir Henry Piers’ Description of the County of Westmeath, 1682, in Vallancey’s Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, vol. i. No. 1, p. 124.