If you heat the room with a candle, you probably won’t notice the difference. Most of the heat will likely rise to the ceiling leaving you still mostly pretty cold, even if the room is 52.4 degrees rather than 52.2. Trying to directly warm yourself with a candle doesn’t really work either; the “habitable zone” of a bonfire is pretty big, you can be several feet from the flames and feel comfortably warm. A candle is so small that the distance between “can’t feel any heat at all” and “first degree burn” is thinner than your hand.

Putting a terra cotta pot over it will warm the pot to the point it feels warm, it lets you meaningfully experience the heat of the candle. That same energy will be spread out on a large surface which will feel comfortably warm to the touch.

I saw people start to come up with these contraptions after those Texas deep freezes where an entire state was caught so thoroughly off guard by long sleeve weather that they started teaching each other how to shit in buckets.

If a Youtube video gains any attention, the idea cancer will soon follow. “Hey you might be able to improvise an emergency heater out of these things you probably have around the house” becomes “finger family pregnant frozen spiderman builds artisanal crisco emergency heater.”