A light on the holidays

by Michael J. DeCicco

This is the time of year to find festivals of lights both near and far.

The grandest of them all, the National Shrine of Our Lady Of LaSallete's "Festival of Lights" in Attleboro, will open as usual this year on Thanksgiving Day, November 25. Its acres of brilliant holiday lights displays will be available for public view every night from 5-9 p.m. until January 2, 2022. This year's theme is "Love is Born", said Father Flavio Gillio MS, shrine director. He proudly notes it will be a full-fledged celebration of the true meaning of Christmas this year. The Crech Museum, devoted to an international display of Christ in the manger scenes, will open Monday to Friday from 5-9 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 2-9 p.m. The food court and snack bar will open Monday to Friday from 4-9 and Saturday and Sunday noon to 9 p.m.. LaSallette's very popular yearly attraction, Christian folk singer Father Pat, Gillio added, will also again appear in concert starting on Thanksgiving Day at 7 p.m. and every Friday and Saturday at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Father Andre Patenaude MS, known to all as “Father Pat,” began singing in his childhood years in Fall River, the LaSallette website notes. He continued to sing and learned to play the guitar during his preparation for the priesthood with the La Salette Missionaries. Father Pat is a world-renowned Christian music legend, Catholic evangelist, singer, songwriter, composer, and recording artist. He is known for his graceful tenor voice and charismatic concerts which take place around the nation and the world, and for hosting his own radio and television programs. Children's attractions and rides will again include photos with St. Nicholas in the welcome center on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 5-9 p.m. and the "Ride to Bethlehem" and the Carousel. Masses will be held Monday through Saturday in the church at 12:10 and 4, and Sunday at 12:10, 4, and 5:30 p.m. Confession will be available daily from 1-4 p.m. The National Shrine of our Lady of La Salette has been a spiritual, social, and human service home to thousands of people from all walks of life for over 60 years, its website notes. In 1942, the La Salette Missionaries bought the Attleboro property as a major seminary and in 1952 the construction of the Shrine was announced. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception marked the official opening of the Attleboro Shrine on December 8, 1953.

CITY LIGHTS

In New Bedford, holiday lights cover every section of the city at this time of year. Manuel Silva, deputy commissioner of the New Bedford Dept. of Public Infrastructure, said his department installs and maintains 20,000 lights every Christmas season, and the effort takes a total of 4,000 hours of manpower and the entire month of November to complete. The department is responsible for the seasonal lights at a total15 sites around the city, and that doesn't include the 150 wreaths and 85 large snowflakes the department places on the city's street lights. Last year's holiday lighting effort went smaller because, of course, it was the year of the pandemic. There were no seasonopening events. The elaborate Clasky Common Park's "Festival of Lights" display of holiday-theme houses and decorations was redesigned as a drive-through experience, with much of it closer to the roadways. This year, that has all changed. Downtown's Christmas Tree and lights display will first light up on December 4. This year's tree will be a 300-foot Spruce donated from Fairhaven, installed, as usual, in front of the public library with a ceremony that will include a Christmas choir and a visit by Santa Claus. The Clasky Common's "Festival of Lights" display will first light up, accompanied by a similar ceremony, on December 5. The first "Festival of Lights" at the Clasky Common Park opened in December 1952. The effort to erect what is still known as the city's largest and most popular city holiday season display has been assisted by the teachers

and shop students from New Bedford Vocational High School since December 1955. Today it features 18 large, lighted holiday-themed structures and another 16 holiday-themed “houses,” including a chapel, a manger, a Christmas village, Santa's workshop, and animated lighting fixtures. Surprisingly, 2021 will be the first year the common lights aren't manually controlled. Thanks to students' innovations, the lights will be on a controlled automated timer this year, Silva said. Just the same, a department electrician will be responsible for regularly checking every electrical connection on the common every day until the structuresare taken down again and stored away until the next year. "We actually install all of it," Silva said, "but with assistance from the students in various shops. The kids scratch our backs, and we scratch theirs. It's worked very well for years." Silva said all of this effort is more than worth it. The city puts this much work into each year's Christmas season displays because it wants to put its best foot forward to make sure everyone gets the feeling of and enjoys the season in the best ways possible. "We do what we can to give the people the best Christmas season possible," he said. "The pure enjoyment we see in people's faces. That's what keeps us going." New Bedford's other holiday lights displays can be found at Ashley Park, on Acushnet Avenue in the North End (snowflakes from Coggeshall Street to Irvington Street), Brooklawn Park, Riverside Park, Buttonwood Park, Custom House Square, the downtown Octopus lighthouse, Harrington Park, Loretta Bourgue Park, Monte's Park, West Rodney French Boulevard (from Cove Street to Brock Avenue), and the Howland Green Library.