If you have been down Greenwich Avenue recently you may have noticed elves are at work. Okay, not actual elves, but something pretty close. Electricians and tree crews are busy putting the finishing touches on lights that will grace the Avenue, Post Road, and hopefully Cos Cob during the coming holiday season. That’s right, the lights are back. Beginning November 25 and continuing through January festive lights will illuminate our business districts as we go about our holiday shopping and dining.
It will be nice during some of the shortest and darkest days of the year to illuminate our major shopping and dining destinations in town. The merchants in Old Greenwich have their First Light Festival which kicks off on December 4 at 6 p.m. They come together every year to offer extended shopping hours and horse drawn carriage rides. There is pride and excitement and the spirit of the holidays in in the air.
Over the years Greenwich Avenue has stumbled around a bit in celebrating the holidays. One year just the trunks of the tress were wrapped in lights, giving one the sense of driving through a colonnade. Another year there were no lights at all, except for in front of the Senior Center. It was dark and depressing and certainly not helpful to the merchants who want happy shoppers visiting their stores. Some mistakenly blamed the town for lack of holiday lights. It was not their responsibility to decorate the town for the holidays. It is ours.
Thankfully, several organizations and people have stepped forward to lead the effort to light up Greenwich Avenue, not just for this year but for future years as well. Spearheading this effort are Sebastian Dostmann and Alyssa Keleshian-Bonomo. Both are quick to say it is a group effort with many merchants, residents, and building owners leading the charge, and when you look at their website (gwchavenue.org), it is an impressive list. However, even in a brief conversation with Sebastian or Alyssa you can feel their passion for this project is (dare we say) electrifying and contagious.
Let There Be Lights is accepting donations to purchase durable and reusable lights and to have them professionally installed on approximately 120 trees that line Greenwich Avenue and Post Road. The cost is not inexpensive. The effort to light the business district is lean, with no paid staff. Sebastian, who owns Sebass Events (and who is perhaps the head elf), has done a remarkable job of not only purchasing the lights, but finding the professional crews willing to donate a portion of the time and effort to ensure the project gets done as cost-efficiently as possible. Indeed, everyone is coming together as a community to support this effort.
And that is where we come in. We, as residents and businesses should support Let There Be Lights. Efforts such as this and the First Light Festival in Old Greenwich are good for our community. They showcase our merchants at the time of year they should be at their busiest. They give us a sense of pride and lift us up.
If enough monies can be raised, they will extend the tree lighting to Cos Cob, and wouldn’t that be great? We should light up as much of Greenwich as possible this holiday season. No one ever said the holidays were too sparkly.
Lighting Greenwich Avenue was a tradition we took for granted. Perhaps the best way to shine light on the holiday light challenge was to turn the lights off as of a few years ago. It certainly got our attention. Thank you, Sebastian Dostmann, Alyssa Keleshian-Bonomo, and the many others who are leading the effort to ensure that the tradition of holiday lights throughout town burns brightly into the future. We hope others will join us in supporting Let There Be Lights. The more the merrier.
