Christmas Eve Luminaria

There’s some friendly debate in the neighborhood about Durango’s first luminaria display on the Boulevard. If you ask the old timers, they’ll tell you it was in the “early 80s”.

That’s 1980 for all of you Gen Xers.

BNA dues were $20 a year. The local grocery store donated a couple thousand lunch bags. Sandco gifted us with free sand, dropping a truckload around noon on the 24th. One of our 4th Avenue neighbors talked an LPEA lineman into manually turning off the street lights. We never asked the City for a permit—because it never occurred to us that we might need one.

Back then there were no votive candles available in SW Colorado. At least there weren’t hundreds for purchase. Amazon was a river in South America.

Once a year my white Toyota Previa van rolled over Wolf Creek Pass in early December, stuffed bumper to bumper with candles purchased from a Denver church supply.

Why we didn’t have those long, skinny lighters that typically jumpstart our charcoal grills is a mystery. Maybe they weren’t invented yet? Someone suggested we light strands of spaghetti. We had a dozen boxes left from our BNA fund raiser spaghetti supper two months earlier. Try lighting spaghetti during a dusk snowstorm and see how far you get.

In the mid 80’s a handful of little boys—mostly pyromaniacs who lived on the north end—got into the act. Never mind that Santa was on his way. One of the dads donated a few lighters and it was like 4th of July in December! Armed with lighters, these alter boy rejects lit candle after candle, sacrificing maybe a half dozen bags that flared into flames. And while our angels lit the candles, their mothers huddled by the sand pile drinking hot mulled wine…

Back then both sides of the median strip were dotted with bags, carefully placed three feet apart. Most families had either sleds or wagons to transport the pre-assembled, folded sand bags. None of the blocks on the Boulevard are uniform, so some blocks had too many luminaria and some had too few.

It wasn’t a problem in those pre-cell phone years. There was always a Subaru dropping off Christmas cookies and reporting the logistics snafus. Somehow it got done in time for church goers en route to Christmas Eve services and we all remained friends. Often a neighbor or two hosted an open house after the job was done and we welcomed newcomers to the fold.

There were years we had no snow. And there were years the bags got snuffed out by midnight thanks to too much snow. One year the snowplow buried all the bags and the next day the bags froze in place. An old Scrooge in the 900 block got her nose out of joint and called City Hall complaining that Christmas had come and gone three days ago, but frozen lunch bags were still on the median. That happened in the 90s.

It was also in the 90s that our neighbors south of College knocked on doors and got recruits to line the route all the way to Sacred Heart Church. It was the most beautiful display ever.

We always take a luminaria vote at the October annual meeting. Are there enough volunteers to get the job done now that our kids are gone and half of us have had knee replacements? A neighbor in the 1000 block said we could cut our expenses and labor in half if we placed a single line of luminaria down the center of the median.  It worked, so we are still doing it.

Lately there are too many years we have too few volunteers. Not enough strong backs in town at Christmas, so no luminaria.  And in recent years we have nearly broken the bank purchasing what was at one time donated. Two years in a row—thanks to Covid—we suspended the tradition, uncertain if it could ever be revived.

Christmas Eve in 2023, thanks to Kristen Bushnell Phillips and Steve Fusco, the tradition returned. We were short staffed so a few did the work of many. And the whole community celebrated the return of Boulevard luminaria.

It’s now summer. The five member Board is starting a conversation about Luminaria 2024. Who will step up? How do we pay for it? Will we have church member support? Can area schools jump in?

We hope you can be part of that conversation. Please email the BNA to take action.

Karen Brucoli Anesi
BNA President 2020-2024