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By Kent Larsen
LDS Church Cancels Temple Square Lighting Ceremony
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH -- The LDS Church has cancelled its annual ceremony
lighting Temple Square with hundreds of thousands of lights. The decision,
reportedly due to safety and crowd control concerns, ends a 35-year
tradition of celebrating the lighting of the square. Although the ceremony
will not be held, the lights are still being put up and with the addition of
the LDS Church's new Main Street Plaza and Conference Center, the number of
lights used is larger than ever.
The tradition of lighting Temple Square and the accompanying lighting
ceremony goes back to 1965 when 20,000 lights decorating the square were
turned on for the first time. The idea for lighting the square came from
then Deseret News publisher E. Earl Hawkes, who was surprised on arriving in
Salt Lake City from Boston to find that so little holiday lighting was done
in Salt Lake City.
Hawkes worked with Apostle Mark E. Peterson, who was chairman of the Deseret
News, to secure the approval of then-LDS Church president David O. McKay,
and then arranged for the display in just three months.
Since then the size of the event has grown substantially. Now more than
750,000 lights decorate the square, and the custom of lighting the grounds
of Temples has spread elsewhere, including the Oakland Temple and the
Washington DC Temple, where the lights are traditionally turned on by a
foreign dignitary.
Sources:
LDS Church Cancels Lighting Event
Salt Lake Tribune 15Nov00 N1
By Peggy Fletcher Stack: Salt Lake Tribune
and
Temple Square lights will go on sans fanfare
Deseret News 14Nov00 N1
By Lynn Arave: Deseret News staff writer
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