By Monica Dinh
Entertainment Editor

Every year since 2008, the Hughes household in Fairless Hills has held their comical and spectacular annual leg lamp lighting ceremony. Once a year on Black Friday night when many are out scrambling through stores, masses of friends, family members, firefighters from different departments, and the occasional stranger, instead, gather in masses upon the Hughes’ front lawn.

Inspired by the 1983 film, “A Christmas Story” where 9 year old Ralphie’s father receives a “scandalous” looking leg lamp in a box labeled “fragile” and proceeds to light it up in the family’s front window – the Hughes family decided to make that scene a part of their holiday tradition. “Watching ‘A Christmas Story’ has always been something we’ve done every year for Christmas,” seventeen year old Sarah Hughes said.

Back in December of 2004, a man named Brian Jones purchased the “Christmas Story” house in Cleveland, Ohio and recreated the home to look exactly as it did in the film. Jones also started selling replicas of the iconic leg lamp out of the house.

This is when Elizabeth Hughes, Sarah Hughes mother, decided to purchase a leg lamp for her husband just in time for the 2005 Christmas season. Soon enough the leg lamp started appearing in their front window year after year. Then in 2006, James Hughes had a few friends over just as Mr. Hughes pulled the leg lamp out of its fragile box. Curious and finding the lamp hilarious, Hughes’ friends came back every single year.

“Overtime my family invited more friends and more family. Somehow in some way we went from having seven people on our front lawn to more than 80. How that happened, I have absolutely no idea,” Sarah Hughes said.

As of November 2008, the Hughes family has made the leg lamp lighting ceremony a formal gathering and quite a spectacle. This year, the 7th annual lighting was no exception.

Each and every year, Mr. Hughes gives a toast to the lamp and never fails to mention and give gratitude to the seven “charter members” of the leg lamp lighting ceremony. “Thank you to everyone who has stuck around since the beginning,” Hughes said in his speech this year.

“It’s funny because people come to see a leg being put up in our front window,” Sarah Hughes said with a laugh. As far as holiday traditions go, this one is sure to stick around for the long run.