Tree Lights Up The Holiday Season

By Kendra Bobowick

 

With a face speckled by soft while lights and cheeks reddened by the cold night, preschooler Alec Devos was surprised by the laughter and conversations around him.

“It’s his first tree lighting,” explained his mother, Kristina Devos. The Annual Newtown Tree Lighting on Friday, November 30, sponsored by the Newtown Chamber of Commerce and the Newtown Parks and Recreation Department, found crowds streaming onto Ram Pasture from nearby streets where luminaries lit the footpaths. Beginning at 6:30 the choir’s carols splashed across the mingling residents eager for the countdown to light the tree. Parents whispered to their children that if they were lucky, they might see Santa Claus once the tree lit up.

Each year the sponsors choose one person to throw the switch lighting the tree. Dr Z. Michael Taweh, the Kevin’s Community Center founder, flipped the switch this year.

Representing the Chamber of Commerce, C.H. Booth Library Director Janet Woycik said, “Years ago we decided that people who give to the town can light the tree, and this year it is him because he does so much for the community.” Kevin’s Community Center provides free health care for residents over the age of 16 who are uninsured or under insured and have limited financial resources.

Coffee, hot chocolate, sugared doughnuts, laughter, and at last the rainbow of lights clinging to the tree brought the annual holiday tradition to a close. The weekend’s 22nd Annual Holiday Festival with two days worth of events on Saturday and Sunday soon followed. (See related story this edition).

Ms Devos and her son stopped beside the decorative wire reindeer strung with lights and looked through the crowd for Santa Claus. They joined the hundreds of residents filling the Ram Pasture and waiting to count down from ten until the pasture’s tallest evergreen was drenched in spots of yellow, red, green, and blue.

Plumes of steam scented with coffee and hot chocolate drifted from serving tables as residents first in line soon turned away with a warm paper cup in one hand and a doughnut gripped in the other. Bolstering their Christmas spirit, residents pressed closer to hear the Newtown High School Choir’s caroling performance, which was preceded by the high school’s dance ensemble as the girls linked arms and kicked to jazzier versions of holiday songs.

Throughout the crowd children sat atop parents’ shoulders where they could look across the thick crowd gathered within the boundaries of hundreds of luminaries placed on the edges of Ram Pasture. Once the holiday lights cast a rainbow-colored glow into the evening and Santa Claus had given away his last candy cane, residents made their way home, hopefully to sit before a warm fire where families could savor their first taste of the holiday season.