The University will welcome the holiday season today with the 2009 Candlelight Celebration, but the event will be held in the Shaver Theatre in the College of Music and Dramatic Arts building this year instead of the Memorial Tower because of weather. The celebration includes the lighting of the Christmas tree and theatrical and choral performances.”It’s a celebration of the holidays, and it includes the celebration of Christmas, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa,” said Melissa Foley, media relations editor in the Office of Communications and University Relations. “There are representatives of all different areas to get everyone on campus in the holiday spirit.” Foley said the 70 percent chance of rain in the Baton Rouge forecast tonight caused the move of the Candlelight Celebration indoors.Foley said more than 1,000 students, faculty, staff and families from the Baton Rouge community flock to the Memorial Tower each year to make s’mores, sing carols, visit with Santa Claus and watch performances. She said having the event indoors may limit some of the traditional activities.Foley said the Men’s Tiger Glee Club, students involved with the Baton Rouge Ballet Theater, the Cox Choir, the Schola Cantorum and some soloists will perform traditional holiday songs and dances.Brian Kittredge, LSU Schola Cantorum conductor, said his choir will be singing “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Carol of the Bells” and an arrangement of “Deck the Halls.””[Performing at the Candlelight Celebration] is a tradition for this choir,” Kittredge said. “It’s a nice way to end the semester. It’s a great way to bring in the holiday season, and a lot of students are looking for relief during exams.”The University bought this year’s Candlelight Celebration “Giving Tree” from Windy Hills Farm, a local vendor in Ethel, La., for the first time since the celebration started in 1995. “It was kind of a sustainability issue,” Foley said. “The trees we’d been getting were shipped from other parts of the country because there weren’t larger trees in Louisiana. We tried to look in the state of Louisiana because it would save a lot on shipping.”Foley said this year’s tree is not as big as previous trees, but it is more sustainable. She said the University also wants to plant a permanent tree on campus for events like the Candlelight Celebration to be even more sustainable in the future.Marcia Cox, owner of Two Roosters Tree Farm, said the University is looking to buy and plant one of the farm’s cedar trees on campus.The University purchased previous trees from tree farms in Washington and Oregon for about $6,000, but this year’s tree will only cost about $500 after delivery, Nancy Little, Public Affairs coordinator, said in an Oct. 16 article in The Daily Reveille. Adding the spirit of giving to the holiday celebration, Volunteer LSU will accept donations of new, unwrapped toys for the Toys for Tots program. Donations can be deposited in the boxes around the “Giving Tree” and at the Volunteer LSU office in the LSU Student Union from Dec. 1 through Dec. 4.Other activities include the Holiday on Campus at the University Student Recreation Center and a pre-Kwanzaa celebration in the Union at 6 p.m. Foley said Hillel at LSU, the Jewish student organization, will sing and light a menorah.The Candlelight Celebration, which starts at 5 p.m., is free and open to the public.
 
 
 
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