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Festival of Lights to usher in holiday season |
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By: Erin Birmingham - Editor-In-Chief
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Thursday, December 07, 2006 |
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Mark your calendars. It’s that time of the season again when student groups across campus come together for the annual Festival of Lights. This year the event will begin at a faculty and staff party hosted by President Donald DeRosa and his wife Karen DeRosa at their home. Following this will be an interfaith service at the Morris Chapel starting at 6:30 p.m.
The walk to Morris Chapel will be illuminated with luminairs by the Resident Hall Association.
This interfaith service, organized by Chaplain Joy Preisser, will not last more than 30 minutes and will be a display of a variety of faiths represented by Pacific students. There will also be a few holiday songs sung by the Pacific Singers. At the end there will be a candle lighting. All attendees will receive a candle to light and carry over to the Holiday Tree.
After the service everyone is invited to walk over to the Holiday Tree at Burns Tower where at 7:00 p.m. the lights will be turned on for all of the Pacific campus and Stockton community to enjoy. At 7:15 students will be invited to walk over to the Grace Covell Dining Hall. Along the way the Greek houses will be joining in the festivities and ceremoniously turning on their professionally hung holiday lights.
At 7:30, students are invited to enjoy cookie decoration, hot cocoa, pancakes provided by a north campus residential group and Holiday Karaoke.
This event is a result of many different student groups’ contributions. The fraternities and sororities, the residence representatives for the north campus, the Multi-Cultural Student Union, Interfaith Council, Bon Appetit, ASuop and a core group of 12 students responsible for overall planning all came together to plan and put together this festive event.
All students are invited to this event and encouraged to stop by Grace for cookies and cocoa. This event has grown a lot since its inception and it should be a “fun way to celebrate the season for everyone,” said Karen DeRosa, the head of the Festival of Lights planning committee. She revitalized the event back in 1995 after it had dwindled and has played a key role in its growth.
In the upcoming years, Pacific can expect to see a new Holiday Tree, for as the event is growing, so is the tree. Since being named the official Holiday Tree it has grown 10 feet and continues to grow at a rate of two feet per year. It is now becoming too large to decorate so either a newly planted tree or newly designated tree will be seen in the future.
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