Luminaries 2025
The Colonial Hills Civic Association (CHCA), Worthington, wishes to express their great appreciation for the generous gift of a box of 2000 plastic grocery bags donated on October 13, 2025, by the Kroger Charitable Donations Organization, Mr. Mark Bruce, Corporate Affairs Manager, the Kroger Company. This box of 2000 bags are 200 more than what we need every two years, and completed the other necessary supplies which the CHCA purchased for our luminary kit assembly event Saturday, December 6, in which we assembled 902 luminary kits for the 826 homes in our neighborhood – each kit containing 5 pounds of pea gravel, 5 tealight candles and 5 white lunch sacks.
And the CHCA wishes to greatly thank our two Luminary Event sponsors for their very generous donations for this event: The Roof Detective and Erin Hunt Glowacki, the Powell Buehler Group.
Also, I want to heartily thank each of the 34 volunteers, including 12 youth, who assembled all these kits in a record-tying time this year of around 10:50 AM! Please see the photos below which show the fairly good, but seasonable weather for our volunteers that day, which was one of the few non-raining days in the previous week.
And I cannot thank enough our CHCA Trustees, who delivered the luminary kits to each home in their district (plus their year-round work in delivering our Courier newsletters and CHCA membership packets, and some of whom have additional roles within the CHCA) – and many trustees also volunteered for luminary kit assembly. And I must thank Al Smyth, who has continued since 2014 to backstop our event, by delivering to nine trustees who were not able this year to pick up their bundles of kits by 1:00 PM on Saturday, including one delivery to all the homes in one district!
Mother Nature, year after year, inexplicably (knock on wood) had given us fairly, if not completely, no-raining, non-heavily snowing, and unseasonably mild days, for both Kit Assembly Saturday and Luminary Display Sunday. This year for Luminary Display Sunday, Mother Nature gave us two out of three of these conditions, including no noticeable wind – but eliminating the effect of the polar vortex was not possible – so it was a frigid 7 degrees. Thus, although the night was fine for the luminary display itself, it took some resolve on the part of our residents to make it happen.
But, braving the cold, a very high percentage of residents set out their luminaries – although the bone-chilling temperature prevented folks from getting out and walking the streets to enjoy the luminary and holiday decorations handiwork of their neighbors. And although I observed while driving each street that it was not the festive night it usually is, anyone out and about that evening was treated to wonderfully continuous displays of luminaries on many streets – for instance, on E. Selby all the way from the apartments and condos to around Foster, plus the virtual 100% participation on Meadoway, Park Overlook, E. Southington, the west, cul-de-sac end of Loveman, and portions of Indianola and Park Blvd.
Will Pearce
Luminary Event Chair
(And now for the photos (Photo Credit: CHCA Webmaster) – please click the “Continue reading” link below to see these pics which have the following descriptions)
_01 Inside Kit Assembly #1
_02 Inside Kit Assembly #2
_03 Inside Kit Assembly #3
_04 Outside Kit Assembly #1
_05 Outside Kit Assembly #2
_06 Outside Kit Assembly #3
