[Durham INC] Night of Lights summary -- Draft

[Pat Carstensen]

1) Here is what I have now about which neighborhoods are celebrating when.  I'll put out updated versions as I get additions and corrections.2) At the last INC delegate meeting, both local papers said they were looking for stories, so it sounds like if you have 2 pictures and a few words, they would love to get a report on your neighborhoood's celebration.3) Thanks to Tom Miller for the history lesson.
Regards, pat
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In Sundays in December, many neighborhoods in Durham have
the lovely tradition of a Night of Lights or Luminaria Display.  Boundaries of parks and edges of
streets are delineated by rows of paper bags with candles burning inside.  

 

One of the original celebrations was organized by the Durham
Women’s Club.  Their celebration
was to put lights around the Hillandale reservoir and to decorate a massive
cedar tree that grew at the north end of the man-made lake. Eventually, the
city closed off the reservoir for security reasons, and the Women’s Club could
no longer decorate it.  The big cedar was removed to make way for
expansion of the reservoir facilities.

 

Getting supplies for the Night of Lights was harder this
year than in previous years.  In
October, the Duke Park organizers discovered from their local supplier that
their distributor had stopped carrying the 8-hour candles; they were offering
to replace them with some little 3-hour tea lights. Duke Park had used some of
the tea lights last year when running out of the longer-burning ones, and they
were definitely unsatisfactory.  
With persistence, Duke Park found a source of 8-hour candles and alerted
other neighborhoods about how to get them. 

 

Which day in December is the proper one for the celebration can
be a little controversial since there are at least three possible rules.  The Women’s Club rule is that Night of
Lights is always the Sunday before Christmas unless that Sunday is within four days
of Christmas, in which case the celebration moves back a week.  Other neighborhoods use the rule that
it is always the second Sunday before Christmas so they have a rain date if
they need one.  The third rule is
that it is whenever the organizers decide it will be.  This year, celebrations are pretty evenly split between
December 9th and 16th.

 

December 9th festivities include candle lighting
and a potluck in Northgate Park, candles in Falconbridge, and caroling in Old
North Durham.  

 

December 16th events include those in the Duke
Park, Trinity Park and Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhoods.  

 

Many neighborhoods use the celebrations to help others.  For example, Watts Hospital-Hillandale will
be collecting canned goods and money for the Community Kitchen of the Urban
Ministries Center; this year’s goal is two pick-up truck loads of food and
$2,500 in cash and checks.  All
proceeds from the Trinity Park activites are given to Share Your Christmas,
which sponsors a family in need during the holidays. 

 		 	   		  
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