Name: Candle Lighting Ceremony
Start: 2025-12-14T18:30:00-05:00
Location: Lincoln Park, Olean NY

This year’s local ceremony of the “Worldwide Candle Lighting,” in memory of all children who have left too soon, will be held in Lincoln Park. The event, held annually worldwide on the Second Sunday in December, will be held locally on Sunday, December 14th, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Lincoln Square Pavilion in Lincoln Park, on South Union Street. Now believed to be the largest mass candle lighting, this event held in communities around the globe is organized
by The Compassionate Friends and held every year on the second Sunday in December, with candles lighted at 7 p.m. in every time zone. As candles burn down in one time zone, they are lighted in the next, creating a 24-hour wave of light that encircles the globe.
Beth and Kathy Boser, the mother and grandmother of Noah Boser, who died in 2002 at the age of seven months while in the care of a local daycare provider, have sponsored this local Olean ceremony for the past 22 years.
The Candle Lighting event in Olean is open to the general public. Parents, grandparents, siblings, families and friends who would like to honor the memory of a child who left too soon, are invited to bring a photograph or memento of their child to display during the memorial services. Candles will be provided for everyone to light.
The program will include music, poems and children’s names will be read to coincide with candle lighting at 7 p.m. Anyone who would like to participate in any way, are encouraged to do so.
To coincide with this event, a tree located in Olean Lincoln Park, facing State Street, has been decorated in memory of children gone too soon. People are encouraged to come throughout the holiday season and place an ornament on the tree in memory of their child/children special to them.