The Holy Fire

I don't want to enrage any of my Eastern Orthodox readers, but I speak out of genuine ignorance here. What's the deal with the Holy Fire?

From what I have read, it's an alleged miracle flame, documented for the last 1000 years, that apparently appears out of nowhere every year at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday. An Eastern Orthodox bishop (typically the Patriarch of Jerusalem) enters the tomb within the church, says the right prayers, and emerges with a lit torch. The flame is then spread to candles held by thousands of believers outside of the church who claim the flame will not burn them for 33 minutes after ignition. I read one story that said that the flame is even flown back to Greece. Here is a video of the flame being bought out of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday, last year (2006):

Seems like a lot of chaos to me. Of course, Christians all over the world report miracles, and some may very well be true. What makes the Holy Fire particularly unique, however, is that it is often used by Eastern Orthodox to confirm Orthodoxy. Allegedly, the flame will not appear to a non-Orthodox who enters the tomb.

Why do they say the fire won't burn the flesh during the first 33 minutes? The videos I have seen don't appear to prove much. They show folks passing their hands quickly through the fire, but not for any appreciable length of time. Of course, the Orthodox who participate in this event claim that nothing underhanded is being done, and they say that this is confirmed by Israeli authorities. I have no reason to doubt their honestly, but I wonder if the claims concerning the inadvertent use of substances such as white phosphorus might have some truth to them. But I fear that the craze surrounding this miracle on Holy Saturday might be doing more to obscure rather than illuminate the message of the gospel and the true value of what we celebrate on Easter sunday: The Resurrection of Christ. It seems that I am not alone.