Saturday was the 105th anniversary of Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane lighting ceremony and festival, but you couldn’t quite call the night a celebration. It felt more like a memorial in a holiday wonderland.
Along the near mile of the cedar-lined street, there were glorious lights, children singing and a soul-thumping procession by alumni of the John Muir High School drum corps. Santa and Mrs. Claus were there, along with a tall skinny elf with curly ribbon hair who called himself Wrinkle Jingle Jangle.
But with all the smiles, the music and a crowd old-timers said was the biggest they’d ever seen, tears were always near the surface. Conversations faltered, voices broke. The emcee, actor Edward James Olmos, welcomed the crowd with a wavering voice full of emotion.
“You have no idea, especially after this year that we’ve had,” said Olmos, a longtime L.A. resident. “I’m crying now but I want to thank you so much for bringing about one of the most extraordinary events to the United States of America.”
People have learned to be patient in Altadena. In this community where entire neighborhoods were reduced to ash and thousands were left homeless after one fire-frenzied night in January, the new etiquette is to wait a moment for the speaker to recover, because they always do.
Pierre Dupuy, 66, a lifelong resident of Altadena, was emotional too as he waited near the stage. He was chosen to turn on the lights this year, in part because of his longtime connection to Christmas Tree Lane, which is officially Santa Rosa Avenue. He grew up in the historic Andrew McNally home just a few steps from the 135 deodar cedars that line the lane; his brother André lived in the house next door and at the time of the fire, Pierre lived a few blocks away, in an old home on North Marengo Avenue.
Waiting for his cue, Dupuy’s voice repeatedly broke and resolved as he told how all three houses burned to ash on Jan. 7. “I ran for my life, with just the clothes on my back, and everything was gone in two hours and 15 minutes,” he said. But he then pointed to the deodar cedar next to where his brother’s house stood. “The house burned to the ground but this tree is still standing,” he said. “So we have something to rally around here. We still have this lane.”
Dupuy said he’s planning to rebuild and is heartened by the number of houses going up already in the community, but the grief is always present. “It’s a sadness I can’t shake; it will just overhang the place for awhile, but I’m very pleased we’re making a comeback and this,” he said, sweeping his arm toward the festival, “is a good thing to rally around right now. We need it; we need it bad.”
That need has fueled Christmas Tree Lane Assn. President Scott Wardlaw and his board all year long. Wardlaw looks like a skinny Santa Claus with long white hair and beard, but he was dressed somberly Saturday night, like a dapper Scrooge after his epiphany.
In his introduction before the tree lighting, Wardlaw said the ceremony would be a little different this year, with a minute and 19 seconds of silence, in memory of the 19 Altadenans who died in the Eaton fire and all the community has lost.
Wardlaw thanked the Disney Co. and its employees for their many quiet contributions to the festival. At least 60 Disney employees lost their homes in the Eaton fire, and the company wanted to do something to help Christmas Tree Lane without overshadowing the community traditions. Along with launching a “Disney Voluntears Village” event to help Altadena families, the company contributed a grant to purchase new equipment to repair the 15-foot strings of lights that drape the cedar trees, enough to add at least one new strand of lights to each of the 135 trees, Wardlaw said. Disney also arranged for their employees to take two-hour shifts for two days to help rebuild the new light strands.
Several people at the festival said it was the first time they’d returned to Altadena since the fire. Stephanie Gates, a former member of the 1970s R&B group, The Free Movement, grew up in Altadena and has been singing the national anthem at the festival for five years. She lives in nearby La Crescenta now and said she hasn’t been able to visit any place in the community but Mountain View Cemetery, where her mother is buried. She drove in at night, she said, so she wouldn’t have to see all that was lost.
Community support is what motivated Wrinkle Jingle Jangle, aka Mark Chatham, to wander the festival in dazzling elf regalia, passing out small gifts to children. He lives in Pasadena, but he has several friends in Altadena, three of whom “lost everything” in the fire, “so I felt it was especially necessary to attend the lighting this year, to connect with and show my support for a community that has lost so much,” he wrote in a text Sunday morning since he was mostly mobbed during the event.
Dressing up as characters is a labor of love for him — he doesn’t do this as a business, he wrote, or even as a hobby. “Social media and our current ‘tech’ way of living has removed people from connecting with one another in a grounded way,” Chatham added. “When you interact face to face you can really make an impact and difference in someone’s life. If I can spread some joy, make someone laugh, receive a hug or a shy wave from a child, it heals me as well.”
At the end of the night, making his traditional walk the whole length of Christmas Tree Lane, Wardlaw and his wife, Priscilla Brown, were absorbing some of that healing. Wardlaw’s back was aching, but he insisted on walking the mile and back, hailing the deputies and public works people keeping traffic off the street and delighting in the decorations the lane’s residents had added to their homes under a canopy of brilliant lights.
Brown grew up just a block from the lane on Barry Place, and as she walked, she admired one of the cedar trees at Santa Rosa and Barry with limbs low enough that she could climb them as a child. She used to go there to think, she said, and then she admitted this was the first time she’d been able to return to Altadena since the fire. “I didn’t want to see what was destroyed,” she said quietly. “I want to keep my memories. I thought I’d wait until they’re able to rebuild.”
But seeing her tree, and lane quietly ablaze with sparkling lights was making Brown smile. She fretted that her husband was hurting and hadn’t eaten that day, but Wardlaw brushed her concerns aside. Touring the Christmas Tree Lane Model Railroad Society’selaborate display at the south end of the lane, he sat for a moment, looking with satisfaction at the crowd, talking, laughing and simply being together in this space.
This, he said, is what Christmas Tree Lane is all about. “We seem to have a shortage of joy these days. People need more joy, and we’re going to give it to them.”
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