Carols by Candlelight is an annual Australian Christmas tradition that was popularised in Melbourne in 1938. The tradition has since spread around the world. It involves people gathering, usually outdoors in a park, to sing carols by candlelight, featuring live performances by both national and international celebrities accompanied by a symphony orchestra.

Vision Australia's Carols by Candlelight is the oldest Carols by Candlelight event in Australia.

In the mid to late nineteenth century, the copper-mining settlement of Moonta, on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, became one of the most significant centres for Cornish emigrant miners in Australia. Large numbers of miners and their families from Cornwall brought not only their labour and mining technology, but also their rich cultural and religious traditions — including Methodism, choral singing, and the celebration of Christmas carols. The Moonta region was even dubbed “Australia’s Little Cornwall” in recognition of this strong Cornish imprint.

Within that context, local accounts and heritage references suggest that at Christmas-Eve gatherings the Cornish miners in Moonta would assemble outdoors — sometimes at mine sites — with candles affixed to their hats, and sing carols by candlelight. The Yorke’s Peninsula Advertiser recorded in December 1882 that “Christmas Eve was celebrated by parties of miners singing carols through the night in the township and along the mines,” providing one of the earliest documented examples of this custom in the region. Later recollections in The Mail described that Cornish miners “sang ‘curls’ [carols] by the light of fatjacks (tallow candles) stuck on their hats with wet clay,” highlighting the enduring memory of the candle-lit gatherings.

Over time the practice of communal carol-singing by candlelight in parks and public spaces was popularised in major cities — notably in Melbourne in 1938, when radio announcer Norman Banks organised the first large-scale Carols by Candlelight, and in Adelaide during the 1940s, where the tradition was adopted as a charity event. The narrative of the Moonta and Cornish origins situates those later large-scale events within a cultural lineage of outdoor Christmas song gatherings, rooted in immigrant community traditions.

While direct documentary evidence linking a continuous chain from the nineteenth-century Moonta gatherings to the modern nationwide Carols by Candlelight events remains limited, the Cornish–Moonta story is widely referenced in local histories and cultural heritage accounts of South Australia. For example, the State Library of South Australia notes that “in nineteenth-century Moonta, Cornish miners with candles on their hats would gather to sing carols on Christmas Eve.” As such, the Moonta tradition adds a valuable local dimension to understanding how communal carol-singing in outdoor candle-lit settings became part of Australian Christmas culture.

Carols by Candlelight, held in Melbourne, Victoria, was introduced in 1938 by radio announcer Norman Banks, of Melbourne radio station 3KZ. Whilst walking home from his night-time radio shift on Christmas Eve in 1937, he passed a window and saw an elderly woman sitting up in bed inside listening to Away in a Manger being played on the radio and singing along with her face being lit by candlelight.^{[citation needed]} Wondering how many others spent Christmas alone, he had the idea to gather a large group of people to all sing Christmas carols together by candlelight. The first ever event was held in Alexandra Gardens the following Christmas in 1938, and was attended by around 10,000 people.^{[citation needed]}

Following World War II, the Carols became so well patronised that the decision was made to move it to the neighbouring park in Kings Domain.^{[citation needed]} In 1959, the newly constructed Sidney Myer Music Bowl provided a permanent venue, where they are still held more than 60 years on as of 2023.