The fourth annual Festival of Lights at the Historic County Building will kick off tonight with an official lighting ceremony by Kaua’i Mayor Maryanne Kusaka. The event is becoming a premier holiday tradition, a once-a-year, extravagant Christmas light and ornament
The fourth annual Festival of Lights at the Historic County Building will kick off tonight with an official lighting ceremony by Kaua’i Mayor Maryanne Kusaka.
The event is becoming a premier holiday tradition, a once-a-year, extravagant Christmas light and ornament display at the building that is the oldest operating government building in Hawai’i, and in the adjoining park on Rice Street.
The unique holiday fixtures once belonged to Josie and Joe Chansky, a Kapa’a couple who began collecting them more than 30 years ago and had them displayed at their home on Kawaihau Road primarily for the benefit of children.
Tonight’s event also will feature the island’s largest Christmas parade (along Rice Street) of the holiday season, renditions of holiday songs by entertainers, and the start of the Salvation Army’s food and toy drive to help the needy.
For many Kaua’ians, the occasion marks the official start of the holiday season and a month of mirth and yuletide joy.
But the Festival of Lights event could have gone dark this year had it not been for the Kusaka’s support, said Elizabeth Freeman, an event organizer.
For the past three years, the event was carried on the shoulders of Freeman, a North Shore resident, plus parents and students from Seacliff School in Kilauea and volunteers from the business community.
They wanted to continue the tradition but found the undertaking overwhelming after three years, Freeman said.
“It was exhausting because we had a very small circle of people to draw from,” she said.
So, last June Freeman approached Kusaka for help. The mayor called a meeting that led to more than 125 volunteers, organizations and businesses offering to pitch in and help.
“I think that says a lot about our community here. Because of it, the festival will be that much better,” Freeman said. “It is heartwarming.” Volunteers pulled up their sleeves and got to work cleaning, refurbishing and installing lights. Help came from Kaua’i Electric, RASCO Electric and Hawaiian Tel (now Verizon), among others, and food was donated by hotels to feed the volunteers.
The lights were originally owned by the Chanskys, who put the lights on display on O’ahu when they lived there and then at their Kapa’a home until the mid-1990s, when Joe Chansky died.
With his death, his wife, Josie, decided to sell the collection.
Freeman had visited the couple’s home when the display was up and remembered the joy the lights brought to her and her young son. She told Josie Chansky it would be a loss for Kaua’i if the light and ornament collection were sold.
” I thought they were one-of-a-kind folk art masterpieces that I have never seen in all my travels around the United States,” Freeman said.
Some of the pieces, she said, belong in the Smithsonian Museum.
“There are pieces that were made with flashcubes 25 years ago,” Freeman said. “How unique is that? Plenty.” With donations from Seacliff, Freeman said she bought many of the lights and wanted to keep them until they could be “donated for posterity.” Protecting the collection had a deeper meaning for Freeman. As a young girl growing up in a small town in California, her parents took her down city streets lined with Christmas lights.
She remembers the impact they had on her.
“The lights hung from lamp post to lamp post. There was a Santa Claus. It was magical,” Freeman said. “It is one of my favorite memories.” She said she wants Kaua’i children to experience the same joy when they see thousands of lights strung inside the county building and on trees in an adjoining park.
Last year, more than 5,000 people visited the light display and were transfixed by it, she said.
“It was something to see. Some families had their dinners there and others just hung around,” Freeman said. “It felt like we have a town center, like old-time America, a sense of community.” Freeman’s interest prompted Josie Chansky to donate the remnants of the lights for display. After a portion of them were displayed at the Kilohana Christmas Fantasy Faire in Puhi for one day one year, Freeman decided a permanent home was needed for them. A decision was made to put them in the county building in 1997.
For this year’s display, Kaua’ian Keith Ruiz and volunteers helped up the lights with bucket truck provided by Garden Isle Telecommunications, Verizon, Kaua’i Electric and RASCO Electric.
The installation of lights was made easier because of electrical work done outside the county building a year ago.
In 1999, Kusaka had RASCO, at its own cost through an arrangement with the county, install electrical outlets at the base of each tree in the park outside the county building. That made it easier for volunteers to wire the trees for the lights.
Volunteers came from Hale Opio, David Conrad’s Kaua’i High choir, Kaua’i High Academy of Travel and Kaua’i Community Correctional Center.
Help also came from those who carried out the first three events: Linda Dietrich, Manu Fonua, Dore Jean, Sue Bottomly, Heather and John Cornell and Anna Murrillo.
Besides the Kaua’i branch of the Hawai’i Hotel Association, food for the volunteers came from LIHU’E Subway, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and JJ’s Broiler.
Lights on The countdown and lighting ceremony for tonight’s Festival of Lights is set for 6 p.m., followed by the Christmas parade at 6:30.
Staff writer Lester Chang can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) andlchang@pulitzer.net.
