Dunmore’s Festival of Lights kicked off Saturday

By Justin Seward

Commentator/Courier

Dunmore is getting into the festive mood with its third annual Festival of Lights running Dec. 11-21.

Della Burkitt started the Festival of Lights in 2019 and describes the event as, “one word – community.”

“What I remember is growing up and we used to go walk in Kin Coulee and they had all the lights there and it was amazing,” said Burkitt. ” I don’t know, it’s just I miss that and I’m a little competitive. So I created this contest three years ago – three years ago there wasn’t any DCA (Dunmore Community Association), they just got started up here again. I threw it in a couple of people’s ears and it was humming and hawing and all of sudden it’s, ‘You know what, no I can do this myself.’”

The first year saw maybe 50 people engage in the competition on Facebook and the number grew to more than 130 people last year. The number of contestants grew from eight to 12 over the two years.

“It is growing exponentially and I want it to grow bigger and bigger,” said Burkitt.

“I think that I drive around Dunmore all the time and I see beautiful houses.”

Burkitt said specifically there is one particular house in mind that started out with a little bit of decorations.

“And each and every year they tell me they’re so excited for this – they keep adding and adding,” she said. “So, their house this year is just fully lit – including their whole entire fence – and it’s just amazing.”

Contest participants have to live in Dunmore and enter by mailing their name, address, contact number and one photo of their decorations to DunmoreFOL@gmail.com by Dec. 21.

“The community is embracing it quite a bit,” said Burkitt. “The other thing too is that we’re also having community businesses donate to it as well.”

The second step is to put up your assigned number sign up, so people can people can vote through scanning a QR code.

Participants can then tune into the live video at 2 p.m. on Dec. 22 to see if their decoration display was a winner.

Winners are determined on the amount of Facebook likes.

First place will receive $100 donated by the DCA, a $50 Starbucks card from Della’s K9 Connection, a $35 Visa gift card donated by Safety Buzz Campus, a $10 gift card from Rusty’s Roadhouse and a certificate of congratulations

Second place will get $50 donated from the DCA, $25 Starbucks gift card from Della’s K9 Connections, $20 visa gift card from Safety Buzz and $10 from Rusty’s Roadhouse.

Third place is a random draw that will include $50 from the DCA, $25 from Della K9 Connection, $20 prepaid Visa gift card from Safety Buzz and $10 gift card from Rusty’s Roadhouse and a certificate for a surprise congratulations.

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