The Festival of Lights is a new tradition that started at John Carroll during the 2022 Christmas season. The event includes a number of different displays and activities. This includes a variety of Christmas trees decorated for many clubs and sports at JC.
In the Learning Commons, the many trees were spread out, decorated, and labeled. Teams and clubs spent time before the event decorating their trees according to their group or sport.
Students, coaches, and club moderators all took time to contribute to their trees.
Senior Connie Fritz said, “I think all of the trees are pretty cool. I like that everyone can be a part of the Festival of Lights this way.”
The event was open to the public, which allowed members of the surrounding community to come and see the trees. Each showed how much JC has to offer for students.
29 different sports teams and clubs provided decorated trees.
Director of Student Activities Laura Ward-Moran said, “The purpose of the trees was to have each group come together and work collaboratively to create something beautiful for the community and represent the different activities we offer in our curriculum.”
Some clubs who contributed trees were the literary magazine staff, the football team, the equestrian team, the One Love club, and the Black Student Union.
Each SGA class council also decorated a tree with class colors and things specifically related to the class.
Each group was provided guidelines on how to decorate their trees. For example, trees had to be at least four feet tall, and they needed to use battery-operated lights.
FCA Moderator Gretta DeMennato said, “We collected new and unwrapped gifts for Toys for Tots for the second year. Jack Hudson, Will Rhine and Drew Jourdan all decorated the tree and will be delivering the toys next week to the drop off location at an alumnus’ business, Das Beirhalle.”
The National Arts Honor Society created a Candy Land display, which included gingerbread houses built by the architecture students. While they had created one last year, they built an even larger display for this year.
“We expanded the Candy Land display that the art society built and rearranged some of the layout,” said Mrs. Ward-Moran.