Gaze Into the Fire : * For the holidays, a few ruminations and recommendations regarding a warmly familiar friend.

Johnny Mathis warbles.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

The holiday season is inextricably linked to glowing embers in the fireplace. Yule logs. Snowy evenings. But the woman behind the counter at a Studio City nut and candy shop seemed puzzled.

“Chestnuts?” she asks. “Like the song? I know they have them back East.”

The flame of a match is just large enough to burn a matchstick. To light a (fire), you have to give the match some help. You’ll need tinder, kindling and fuelwood.

--The Boy Scout Handbook

Indeed.

Modern urbanites need not ignite wood to survive. They have been lulled by the warm glow of pilot lights, the prepackaged convenience of Presto Logs. So we embark on a search for our pre-industrialized roots. Or, better yet, for our tinder and kindling. The journey begins at a dirt lot in Chatsworth. Chopped wood stands in weighty stacks all around.

“The first thing I ask people is, ‘Are you an experienced fire builder?’ ” says Rick Muelder, who sells firewood here.

Muelder gestures toward the piles of avocado wood. An eighth of a cord will run you $30. He can almost smell the rich aroma of English walnut burning.

Start with the soft woods, he says. Pine, citrus and avocado burn with just a few sheets of newspaper as a starter. Make sure you crisscross the logs, giving them plenty of space to breathe.

The bright flames will quickly die. Add hardwoods--eucalyptus, oak, walnut and juniper--to keep the fire going through the evening. Each of these woods has its own brightness, its own aroma. Walnut smells like pipe tobacco, juniper like incense.

“Some people shop for the smell,” Muelder explains. “But that’s usually for the benefit of their neighbors because all that smell goes out the chimney.”

And don’t talk to him about those puny log bundles that are sold in grocery stores. They are often unseasoned and wrapped in plastic which, he insists, invites a damp mold.

“Frankly,” he says, “there is some firewood that just won’t burn.”

*

The cultural evolution of human beings, not to mention their survival, depended on the fireplace. It’s true. If we could not summon fire--first at the hearth and, later, in the form of central heating--we’d all be sharing condominiums in St. Petersburg, Fla. Or here in Los Angeles.

Because of heating, we can live in the coldest locales on Earth. That is why--even inside sunny bungalows in Southern California--the fireplace takes a position of honor in the living room or den. We adorn it with paintings and photographs of loved ones. Form over function. It has outlived its usefulness and become a secular altar.

Nowhere is this more evident than in a Woodland Hills fireplace shop. Armen Aslanian beckons you to a magnificent mantle with $900 marble-and-brass andirons.

“Look at that white ash,” Aslanian says, pointing to the burning logs beyond all the trappings. “When you get the white ashes, you get more heat out of a fire.” Heat is crucial, he says. Aromatic logs, opulent fire irons--it’s all window dressing. The important part is the fire, and that is what his family has spent nearly two decades peddling.

The days of the simple brick fireplace, it seems, have passed. The modern version is equipped with a Canadian-made, $1,000 cast-iron insert. Traditional fireplaces keep less than a third of a fire’s heat in the house, he says. These new black and blockish contraptions promise more than 70% efficiency.

“Two pieces of wood, believe it or not, last eight hours,” Aslanian says.

But if high-tech heating seems like overkill in a city where December temperatures infrequently dip below 40 degrees, less-extreme options are available. So-called “C-grates”--odd, tubed contraptions--blow heated air from the fireplace across the room. They cost considerably less than the Canadian inserts.

And there are glass doors, which Aslanian calls the fire builder’s best bet. Most fireplaces built in the last decade are equipped with these doors, but that doesn’t mean homeowners know how to use them.

“People actually open the glass doors when they have a fire burning,” Aslanian says with a hint of disgust.

The doors are meant to remain closed. That prevents strong drafts from running up the chimney and carrying away all the fire’s heat, he says. That heat will effectively radiate from the glass.

“I try to tell people, ‘What’s the use of having a fire if all the heat is going outside?’ ”

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,

Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

--English poet William Cowper

Disregard all of the above.

Buy yourself a set of gas logs. Millions of suburbanites can’t be wrong.

Oh, the purists may shudder. But who needs the mess of wood and ashes? If you squint, those concrete or ceramic logs look real. And they light with the simple turn of a dial.

Even better, these synthetic fires can be equipped with remote controls. Just click from the couch.

The purists cry out in agony.

“In California, we sell so many remotes,” Aslanian says. He shakes his head. “People are getting lazier and lazier.”