By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

CLIFTON - This unique parade will hold darkness at bay here Sunday - if only for a while.

Andrea Rosenthal, Conni Matzkofz and Beth Koenig (rear center, left to right), the organizers of the Clifton Lantern Walk, follow a group of kids. (Tony Jones photo) | ZOOM |

At 6:15 p.m. Sunday, hundreds of Cliftonites carrying lanterns of various shapes and sizes are expected to gather in the parking lot of Clifton School for the third annual Lantern Walk.It's a gaslight neighborhood tradition that has taken hold because of one resident and her pleasant memory from growing up in Germany.

"The Lantern Walk is one of my best childhood memories,'' said Conni Matzkofz. "The whole town would turn out. The lights were beautiful. I wanted to share that memory with my new home.''

Matzkofz said that in the heavily Catholic southern part of Germany, the Lantern Walk was a tradition associated with a religious holiday, St. Martin's Day.

But, in the Protestant north where she grew up, the Lantern Walk "didn't have the religious overtones that it did in the south. It was just a way of bringing the community together.''

Matzkofz organized the first Clifton Lantern Walk in 2001 through Friends of Clifton, a neighborhood organization in which she is active.

"It's become quite popular,'' Matzkofz said. "There is a lady in Indiana... who heard about it last year and came over to join the walk because she is from Germany, too, and remembers the same thing from her childhood.''

In Germany, most people carried old-fashioned lanterns with candles. The lanterns used in the Clifton walk are mainly battery powered.

"It's just safer, especially for the kids,'' Matzkofz said.

Many of the walk participants make their own lights: A neighborhood Boy Scout troop is making its lanterns as a group project.

The procession will start in the school parking lot, go south on Clifton Avenue to Resor Avenue, west to Middleton Avenue, north to Warren Avenue, then back across Clifton Avenue to Calvary Church, where refreshments will be served.

"We'll walk just as the sun is setting and light up the neighborhood,'' Matzkofz said. "It will be lovely.''

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E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com