Written by Abby Kellett
Scrooge may hate the yuletide spirit, but at Harding this year he’s the reason for the Christmas glow. The Homecoming play, “Scrooge,” will be performed in the Benson auditorium this weekend, and to help set the mood, some of the campus Christmas decorations have been put up a bit differently.
While Harding’s traditional “blue” lights are not being put in the trees any earlier, the order the lights are being strung in is different this year. The lights are going up around the Benson first instead of around other, less noticed parts of campus.
The Harding lights have become a trademark of the university despite the fact that they have only been put up the past three years. Before that, the SA would string lights by the student center, and occasionally a couple strands would be put up at the top of the Administration building.
The lights are typically referred to as blue, but in fact they are white. When President David Burks suggested to Physical Resources that 60,000 Christmas lights be put up, there was only one way to carry out the idea at the time.
“When we started talking about this we said we have to go LED lights,” head of Physical Resources Danny DeRamus said. “If not, we’d have to have a ton of strings of power and have cords running everywhere. The power on the LED lights is next to nothing compared to incandescent lights. That’s why the lights give off that blue-ish tint. It’s called a white light, but since they’re LED, it’s more of an ice blue white.”
A lot of work goes into turning the campus into a winter wonderland. Every tree is numbered, and every strand of light is packaged by its tree number at the end of the year. Not only that, but every bulb has to be checked and sometimes replaced before it can be put away for storage for the next winter season.
Putting the lights up is a weather-dependent process, and the rain has made the work a little more than difficult this semester. Physical Resources started putting up the lights last week, but the progression has been slow despite all the preparation.
Harding’s administration wants the lights to be completely hung in the trees and turned on the day students arrive back from Thanksgiving recess and is planning on keeping the trees glowing until Jan. 4.
The lights are not only for the students’ enjoyment, but to attract people from the community to come on campus as well. The lights have also begun to serve as wedding decorations.
“There are several weddings that are planned, and they are very concerned about when those lights are on and how long they stay on,” DeRamus said. “We turned them off one year, and we were going to take them down, and, oh, we got a phone call. A lady was getting married and really wanted them in the background at cone chapel, so we left them on just a little longer that year.”
The idea for the lights was Burks’, but the inspiration is originally from the Nashville’s Opry Mill annual lights show. According to DeRamus, Burks feels that the lights serve not only as an excellent way to draw people to the campus, but also as a recruiting effort.
“He felt it is a way to get people to want to be a part of Harding and contribute and want to go to school here,” DeRamus said. “It’s a recruiting effort, not with just kids, but with the town, and we believe in this town, and they can believe in us. That’s kind of why were doing it, and its really paid dividends.”
This will be the fourth year the university has strung the lights, and it now takes two lifting equipment trucks and about 90,000 strands of lights to illuminate the campus.
Weather permitting, Harding’s scenery will once again be twinkling blue by the end of November.
