Seventh grader
to flip the switch
Justin Cowen, a seventh grader at East Ridge Middle School, will be the official switch puller and button pusher for the town’s annual tree lighting ceremony on Friday, Nov. 27.
The lighting ceremony will take place at 6:30 p.m. in Town Hall.
Strands of lights that decorate Main Street downtown, from Governor Street to Prospect Street, will flash to life.
“I learned of Justin during the Halloween celebration,” said First Selectman Rudy Marconi, who personally invited the boy to do the honors with the lighting.
Justin has been suffering with an illness, and had just gotten out of the hospital on Halloween in time to partake of the candy at the Lounsbury House, where the police department entertained hundreds of children.
“He sounds like a wonderful young man, and I thought it would be wonderful to have him flip the switch,” Marconi said.
People will gather around 5:45 p.m. There will be caroling, with the Ridgefield Chorale and SPHERE Chorus.
Marconi thanked volunteers from the American Legion for decorating the lampposts downtown with green garlands and red ribbons.
“I told them they picked the coldest day of the year to do it,” he said jokingly on Monday. The morning temperature was in the 30s.
Poet and entertainment personality Ira Joe Fisher will host the tree lighting ceremony this year. Speakers will include members of the Chamber of Commerce and Billy Craig, owner of Craig’s Fine Jewelry, who is a member of the Downtown Ridgefield organization.
The countdown for the switch flicking will begin at 6:30 p.m., then “the lights will hopefully come on,” Marconi said, and Santa Claus will arrive on a fire truck.
Stores downtown will stay open later than usual to accommodate the holiday shopping crowds.
“Personally, I love seeing the lights,” said Ellen Burns, owner of the Books on the Common.
The Ridgefield Holiday Trust Fund pays for the cost of the lights and stringing them onto the trees.
Several years ago, the bulbs were replaced with LED models to save electricity costs for the town.
“It used to run $8,000 or $9,000 for those lights from the day after Thanksgiving to the first day of February,” Marconi said.
The annual lighting began about 80 years ago, according to Ridgefield historian Jack Sanders.
“I do know that the Lions Club, along with merchants, undertook a project to dress up the village with Christmas lighting in 1934. Eleven lines of colored lights were strung across Main Street,” Sanders said.
The only years there was no downtown lighting were during World War II, Sanders said, when electricity was conserved for manufacturing during the war effort.
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