Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry Warren’s ‘Warren Wishes You Merry Christmas Happy New Year’ sign is up for the season.

Not all Black Friday traditions have to do with shopping or eating leftovers.

On Friday, a group composed of City of Warren staff and community volunteers got together to erect the Warren Wishes You Merry Christmas Happy New Year sign fronting the Allegheny River at Crescent Park.

“It goes up every Black Friday,” City Department of Public Works Superintendent Joe Reinke said.

The timing allows the city to welcome the help of students in the Warren Area High School varsity wrestling program each year.

The wrestlers weren’t the only volunteers involved. Members of the community showed up to help. But the 15-team members and their coaches played an important role and make sure the work can be done in one day.

“We just need their muscle,” Reinke said. “They make really quick work of it.”

The heavy work is setting up letters and pounding support posts into the ground, he said. The wrestlers handled that in a couple hours and were set free to enjoy their days after that.

The city staff remained to handle the time-consuming, but not back-breaking work of screwing in bulbs.

There are eight bulbs in the I and more than 30 bulbs in each W.

With 41 letters in the message, that’s about 1,000 bulbs.

The letters are stacked on top of each other to save space in storage, so the bulbs have to be removed every year, Reinke said. “The most time-consuming part is screwing the bulbs in.”

Any bulbs that are broken or otherwise not working have to be replaced. And, sometimes sockets go bad.

The city workers on the scene spent a full day on bulb-related tasks.

There were already two letters down on Sunday. That is to be expected, Reinke said. Wind, and sometimes vandals, topple parts of the sign. This time, he suspects vandalism.

Whatever the cause, “The DPW just sets them up the next day,” Reinke said, and repairs any damage.

Putting up the sign, screwing in bulbs, and putting letters up again, is part of the job for the city staff. “We’ve been doing this for 20 years,” he said. “Before that, it was the Warren Jaycees.”

But the tradition wouldn’t have lasted if the sign didn’t have special meaning in the community.

Reinke said he read comments on a recent online post about the sign. “It must mean a lot to a lot of people,” he said. “People who have moved away reached out and said that is what they remember about the holidays in Warren.”