[Durham INC] Night of lights -- final list

[Pat Carstensen]

On 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 they ran 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 through the InterNeighborhood Council list-serve. 
 
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, Watts Hospital-Hillandale and Old West Durham neighborhoods.  Old West Durham is having a neighborhood potluck on December 15th as part of their celebration.
 
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.  Old West Durham is collecting donations for EK Powe Backpack Program.  
  		 	   		  
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