Author: atwiford

Cherry Hill’s BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir temple kicked off its five-day Diwali celebration on Oct. 18 with food, prayer and religious offerings.

The holiday marks the Festival of Lights and the triumph of good over evil celebrated by the Hindu community. The temple also welcomed non-Hindus from throughout the region.

“It was a pleasure for me to visit the Cherry Hill BAPS Temple … to celebrate Diwali,” said Mayor Dave Fleisher, “and I wish all who celebrate a joyous and peaceful holiday.” 

He and other officials wore colorful garlands known as mala around the neck, a Diwali tradition.

“Cherry Hill is a diverse community that welcomes and embraces people of all faiths,” Fleisher noted. “For our Indian community, Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is one of the most important and widely celebrated holidays with a message for us all, that there is always light waiting to shine through the darkness.”

For Diwali, early worshippers would leave offerings of food on tiered platforms in front of the temple altar. Each of the five days of its celebration represents an aspect of the Hindu religion by honoring gods and methods of worship.

The night of Oct. 20 at BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir was set aside to pray for business owners, with several of them bringing their financial books to the temple to be blessed for the coming new year.

Temple head priest Ashok Dave explained the meaning behind Diwali as a way of cleansing a person’s spirit.

“It drives out the darkness,” he pointed out. “Not physical darkness, but the darkness of when one has bad thoughts or does bad actions.”

As Diwali wrapped on Oct. 22, temple members gathered for prayers and some headed to the BAPS temple in Robbinsville to worship and pray.

A campus of Cherry Hill’s Y.A.L.E School held its own Trunk or Treat on Oct. 18, combining it with the school’s third annual school car show. 

Created in collaboration with the South Jersey Camaro Car Club, the show idea came from Gabriella Termine, who works for the school’s vocational co-op and has a background with the club. She also owns her own car business, where she often hosts automotive events.

Y.A.L.E – a state-approved private school that educates students with autism and learning disabilities – was looking for ways to further engage with the community.

“We also want to bring light to our program,” Termine explained. 

Students from the school’s Bright Horizons 9 nonprofit and the Vocational Skills Lab and Co-op helped to create specialty trophies for the free show, part of an effort to teach young adults with developmental disabilities skills for the workforce.

In addition to being one of the organizers, Termine also brought her own vehicle, with its decals of the characters Boo and Sully from Pixar’s “Monsters, Inc” and Termine in a hooded costume from the film.

“I always theme my cars, and I had my students actually help me …” she said. “We rattled down a whole list, and Sully came to be because it’s a big blue monster. And I actually had them help me create the graphic design mock-up …

“So it’s neat, because there’s a little bit of my students touch on the car.”

Other vehicles at the show with movie themes or characters from pop culture included a neon green car with a decal from “Ghostbusters” and a plastic skeleton wearing a uniform from the film behind the wheel, as well as one with a “Wreck It Ralph” theme. 

The hood of a bright orange car featured a decal of the cartoon cat Garfield, with another across the top of the windshield. He also popped up under the hood. The vehicle’s owner is Maribel Garfield of Patterson, who attended the show with her daughter Pina Rios and her grandchildren.

The car and its orange paint were a gift from Garfield’s husband, who’s been competing in car shows for 11 years.

“She has over 400 trophies,” Rios noted, translating for her mother. “And she’ll drive all over the U.S. As long as it is drivable, she’ll attend any car shows. This is her thing. This is her baby.”

Manfred and Debbie Griebau of Millville have participated in the car show every year since it began, choosing a different Halloween decoration theme each time. This year, it was skeletons for their dark blue Chevy, with a plastic tortoise skeleton under the hood of the car and two other skeletons in the front seats. A howling dog skeleton was stationed in the back seat.

“We do this every year,” Manfred said, “and each year the decoration gets bigger and bigger.”

Township resident Chavonne Stulemmer attended the trunk or treat and car show with her children after learning about the event from an online group called Macaroni KID.

“We live in the town, figured we’d take a walk over and let the kids have some fun,” said Stulemmer, guiding her children between two parking lots to gather candy from owners of the cars. The event wrapped with a best costume contest, whose winners got the trophies created by the vocational students. 

Cherry Hill hosted its harvest festival on Oct. 19 at Croft Farm, an annual tradition in the township that goes back at least two decades, when it was called the pumpkin festival.

“Harvest Fest is one of Cherry Hill’s biggest and best events, drawing thousands each year,” said Mayor Dave Fleisher. “This (year) was no different, with perfect weather, food trucks, a beer garden, live entertainment, a petting zoo, pumpkins and over 75 vendors.” 

At the entrance, large produce palettes full of pumpkins were available for the taking, a major feature of the festival. Music was provided by both a DJ and live musicians. An area for kids activities such as mini golf and Henna art was set aside behind some of the buildings on site, with a bubble machine placed at the entrance.

Kylie Schimph was in charge of face painting, noting that the Philadelphia Eagles design she offered was particularly popular.

“It was awesome,” she enthused about the festival. “We had a great time, we had a lot of people, lots of business, and I think the kids really enjoyed it.”

Township police had their own booth adjacent to the kids section, where they gave out police-branded items and sold shirts to raise money for the Police Unity Tour. They also had a station inside one of the buildings to create ID cards for kids. 

The Cherry Hill Environmental Board had a set of displays and activities where families could sit and read books about nature and wildlife, and there were tables of information on the township’s trails and the local ecosystem.

“We’re just illustrating here that two of our trails are designated as National Recreation trails, yeah, which is kind of a big deal,” explained Lewis Gorman, chair of the township’s Environmental Advisory Committee.  “There’s probably less than 10 in the entire state.” 

Two games were available that asked kids and adults to identify wildlife by images and animal tracks. Taxidermied animals, antlers, bones, skins and three-dimensional casts of tracks were also on display. 

“I like getting the adults involved,” Gorman noted. “They learn stuff with a message that all these animals live around here. So get out on the trails, get in contact with nature, and try to find the animals. If you can’t find the animals themselves, sometimes you can find their tracks.” 

The area furthest from the event entrance featured a food court with vendors serving everything from apple cider donuts to dumplings, while the Mechanical Brewery truck sold beer and seltzers. 

“I’m proud to bring people of all ages and backgrounds together, and to see record-breaking attendance at so many of our events,” the mayor commented. “It’s a testament to our community’s desire to connect and come together.” 

A large section of the festival was set aside for local businesses, organizations and vendors who sold desserts and snacks like macarons and vodka-infused cotton candy, as well as handmade crafts. One of the businesses was the mobile bookstore Austen’s Shelf, where township resident Kiera McFadden-Roan stopped to peruse the available selection.

“It was lots of fun,” she observed of the event. “It was a nice mix of free activities and paid activities, a really nice afternoon.”