Lighting up the night the electricty-free way
Tonight thousands of people are expected to gather together in Balboa
Park to celebrate Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights. Diwali (or Divali) is
the most important holiday in India.
Diwali is celebrated by lighting small clay lamps filled with oil, which
are kept on at night. Because these lamps rely on oil, not electricity, this celebration gets our energy-friendly
seal of approval. Several staff members
from SDCHM and their families plan to attend tonight.
Pine-branch oil lamp
Before the invention of electricity, oil lamps had been used as a light source for thousands of years in China. The lamp pictured above is part of our permanent collection. It is a replica of a pine branch lamp, which would have been used during the 19th century in China. This lamp utilized vegetable oil and pine branches to create a light source. The vegetable oil would have been housed in the lower container and a twig or small branch of pine was used as a wick
Even if you can’t make it to the festival tonight, we hope you will consider going easy on the electricity this week. But perhaps you might consider dinner by candlelight sometime this week, instead.
If you have some energy-saving ideas to share, we would love to hear from you! Post a comment here or on our Facebook page.
Thank you to SDG&E for making this post possible.
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