If you’ve walked along Station Avenue or Maple Avenue during Christmas Eve, you’ve seen the streets lit with Luminarias: candles set inside paper bags, with sand or kitty litter at the bottom to keep the candles in place and weigh the bag down. They are an enduring tradition in Langhorne Borough. Houses on Station Avenue have lit Luminarias for around four decades, and recently Maple Avenue joined the tradition.
This year, in celebration of the Borough’s 150th anniversary, the Luminarias will be expanded to light up the town. Thanks to a generous donation by the Langhorne Borough Business Association, as well as Jeff Adami, the Borough can purchase Luminarias for several other streets, and our goal is to get as many lined with Luminarias as possible. Note that the only cost to participants is the cost of the sand or the kitty litter needed to support the candles and weight the bags.
To do this we need your help!
For each street that would like to participate, we need volunteer street captains to coordinate with their neighbors and the Borough to determine how many properties will participate and how many Luminarias will be needed, and to collect and distribute them to each home. Street captains would be responsible for:
- Distributing order forms to houses on their street and collecting order information to return to the Borough office by Tuesday, November 10th. Street captains should have neighbors return their order forms by Saturday, November 7th.
- Preparing the bags and candles for their street, which will be kept at Borough Hall once the Luminarias have been ordered and picked up
- Distributing bags and candles to each participating house on their street
On December 24th, participating homeowners will set up their Luminarias at ten-foot intervals in front of their property and have them lit at 5pm. In the event of rain, snow, or heavy wind, the Luminarias will instead be lit on December 25th at the same time.
Please note that we can only purchase Luminarias for Borough streets, and Pine Street will not be included due to safety concerns.
If you would like to volunteer as a street captain for your street, please contact the Borough Clerk at clerk@langhorneborough.com and state which street you will be in charge of. If you would like to volunteer but don’t have a specific street in mind, one can be assigned to you. Street captains will be provided with copies of the order form to distribute throughout the street. Please return all completed forms to the Borough by November 10th.
For more information about the Luminarias, check out this helpful instructions sheet.
Let’s celebrate 150 years of Langhorne Borough with one of our town’s most beautiful traditions!
