Bolingbrook's Festival of Lights draws thousands to Promenade Saturday

Bolingbrook’s Festival of Lights brought thousands of Chicago area visitors to the Promenade Bolingbrook mall on Saturday to kick off the holiday season.

To view a photo gallery of the event, click here.

Few may know the event is the result of a 30-year evolution that once began as a simple parade around the east side of town.

“Before we partnered with The Promenade, the event was significantly different,” said Joe Gross, vice-chairman of the Bolingbrook Civic and Cultural Affairs Commission, one of the co-partners of the festival.

In the 1980s the village sponsored a Parade of Lights that included a parade through residential areas on the east side of town, replete with festive floats and marching bands that ended with Santa Claus seated on a float.

Hundreds of residents would line the residential streets and take in the parade, sometimes braving snowfalls and cold rains that added a certain charm to the parade, officials said.

“I remember riding on a float sponsored by the village’s Public Works Department. It was the first time I ever rode on a float, and it was a lot of fun waving to all the people along the route,” said Cathy Bouley, longtime Bolingbrook resident and member of the Bolingbrook Historic Preservation Commission. “But the parade lasted only a handful of years.”

By the 1990s the parade gave way to a Festival of Lights, scheduled in early December, a quaint gathering played out on the grounds south of Village Hall.

Lighted trees and other colorful features decorated the grounds, and if the pond behind Village Hall had yet to freeze over, the reflections of lights on the water added to the “small town” atmosphere.

The Civic and Cultural Affairs Commission was heavily involved in putting on the festival, which included many elements visitors still enjoy today — a craft tent, a cookie decorating station, a station to collect greeting cards for service men and women, ice sculptures, a Living Nativity play and a Santa House.

The hay-filled tent that housed Santa was a central gathering point for residents to wait in line for children to have their pictures taken while sipping hot chocolate and munching sugar cookies.

The village conducted its final festival behind village hall in 2007, the same year The Promenade opened and conducted its own, separate tree-lighting ceremony in the center of the mall.

The tree lighting centers on what the mall bills as the largest commercial light show in the Chicago area, a 50-foot tree illuminated by 250,000 LED lights and covered with ornaments.

Called the “Symphony in Lights”, the tree’s lights are synchronized to music played by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Then, in 2008, the event became a multi-partnered event that has become one of the most highly recognized holiday events in Chicago.

“I recently went on a website showing Chicago area happenings for the holiday season, and the number one attraction was the Chicago tree lighting ceremony in mid-November. The next one listed? The Promenade Bolingbrook event,” said Mike Evans, executive director for the Bolingbrook Chamber of Commerce.

Sethjohn Davis, a manger at Gordon Biersch Brewery Pub, close to where the tree stands in the mall, said the opening ceremony has become a boon to the businesses in The Promenade over the years.

“We have come to expect the business to be non-stop pretty much all day on the opening day of the light show. I would guess there are 1,500 to 2,000 people outside for the various events and tree lighting, and we are filled from before it starts to after it is over,” Davis said.

The evolution of the event “just makes sense,” Kuchler and others say.

“Bolingbrook does not have a central downtown like other towns along commuter train lines, so this has the effect of bringing the whole community together, as well as people from the surrounding area,” Kuchler said.

The event has grown the last few years to the point the mall will install signs around the mall for easy navigation, and printed maps will be handed out as well.

Elements such as cookie decorating and gingerbread house stations will be moved indoor to vacant storefronts, allowing visitors to enjoy events both indoors and outside, Kuchler added.