St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

CHRISTMAS NUMBER FIVE | Darrin Henry

Tonight’s Festival of Lights on St Helena was once again a dazzling success.

It’s becoming a habit that everyone is quite happy to get used to – this the fifth ‘electric parade’ organised by Jamestown’s Pilling Primary School and “even better this year” was the general consensus from people on the street.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

No Parking After Five Please

A few hundred revellers draped in various assemblages of sparkling LED lighting, jigged their way in time (mostly) down through Jamestown to jolly Christmas tunes pumped from car speakers.

We had not intended to cover tonight’s parade this year, but a few minutes after the procession began the excitement of the event took hold and I was powerless to resist!

Our very first blog post was the Festival of Lights 2014. We were firing the flash all the way down the street again in 2015. Tonight made it a hat trick.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

Earlier today the ship arrived from Ascension Island bringing plenty of friends and family home for the festive season. As a result there were hundreds of people milling about the streets all day and it had been steaming hot – ‘Christmas weather’ as we say.

How did they manage to clear the lower town of vehicles?

Elaine Benjamin, Headteacher of Pilling, had been on the radio the day before asking drivers to remove their cars from the Grand Parade and Main Street from 5pm before the event. Even so, with the heaving volume of motor cars now vying for parking spaces in the island’s capital, it was an impressive achievement to clear the roads.

St Helena Festival of Lights

Although this is our third Festival of Lights post, the St Helena street parades are especially popular with our followers who are now overseas, but still hold fond memories of these island traditions and enjoy spotting familiar faces – so this big picture post is a Christmas treat for all of you.

‘Dancing down the street’ to the 2016 Festival of Lights.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island's Festival of Lights 2016.

St Helena Island’s Festival of Lights 2016.