To say the summer went by too quickly is an understatement. Very few people are looking forward to the end of summer and all that goes with it. Teachers will have been bracing themselves, no, getting ready for the return of students for the past few weeks but virtually everyone else will have a moment where they suddenly realize summer is over, fall is coming and there shall be no more extended holidays for many, many months to come. In the spirit of the end of summer, the end of August and in the hope for more good days than bad, an evening of sky lanterns would be an excellent way to spend the evening.

Whether you simply had a slow day at work from too much Bank Holiday fun yesterday or are going mad looking for school supplies for your school aged child, taking some time this evening to launch floating lanterns can change your mood and get you ready for the next day. For each person, their reason for launching lanterns may be different but the effect is the same: relaxation and a sense of peace.

History tells us that sky lanterns were used traditionally as a prayer vessel. The person would write a prayer on a floating lantern and then would launch it into the night sky knowing that their message of hope, peace, wealth, love and more would make it to the heavens and hopefully would be answered. Today, many people use sky lanterns in a semi-traditional manner. While they may not believe that a diety will answer their prayers, the symbolism of setting one’s dreams and hopes free to float away is not lost either. For the parent, for example, they may send up Chinese Hanging Lanterns with the hopes for success for their children in the coming school year and the children may launch floating lanterns in the hopes that August gets extended for just a couple more weeks.

For everyone in the UK, the close of August is also the close of festival season. For some, this could be considered a good thing, especially if they live near somewhere were a festival is held. For others, the end of festival season means going back to the mundane, daily life or even time to find a normal job until the next festival season starts up next year. For many people, launching sky lanterns with the hope of prosperity is but one thing they will do to help kick start their job search. While some students will be cutting back their hours so they can go to school, others will be entering the workforce for the first time and for both groups, sky lanterns are a good choice to wish them luck in their ventures, both money motivated and academically motivated.

So let’s all say Cheers to August, summer and to a certain extent freedom and get back to work. Evenings and weekends become our consolation prize, all great times to launch sky lanterns to remind ourselves of the summer of fun we all had.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 7:04 AM and is filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.