Christmas in the Park

I just made the last train to Morgan Hill after attending the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at Christmas in the Park in San Jose. For those of you who don't know, this annual event has been going on for 23 years and is held at Cesar Chavez Park in downtown, between the Fairmont Hotel and the Tech Museum. It is one of the city's biggest seasonal attractions.

There are plenty of lighted and automated displays (they even have their own music), food vendors and a center stage for nightly musical performances. The major tradition, from my point of view, is the forest of Christmas trees that are decorated by the local high schools, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops and other community groups.

The ceremonies started around 5:30 PM with the emcee being Jon Farley, the NBC 11 weatherman. I braced myself for some bad weather humor, but it never came. There was, however, a slight drizzle and some fake snow.

The Lincoln High School Chamber Chorale performed a number of traditional Christmas carols that were only marred by the airplanes that passed overhead every 3 or 4 minutes. There were the unfortunate sing-a-longs that had minimum audience participation. The crowd, by the way, was made up of many young families with little children, young couples out on a Friday night and many Sharks fans who were there to catch the lighting before tonight's game.

There were a couple of guys next to me who were waiting for the tree to be lit. They would yell out at the end of each carol, "Light the Christmas tree!" It became a theme as we then listened to a speech by the Mayor, Ron Gonzales. Mayor Ron took the opportunity to let us all know that for the third year in a row, San Jose has been declared the safest big city in the U.S. by the FBI. While I was happy to hear that, I worried that his stating that fact would jinx the whole town.

After his speech, there were a couple more yells for lighting the tree. Instead, the city's Postmaster presented the new holiday stamps and encouraged everybody to buy it for mailing out this year's Christmas cards. The guys that had been yelling decided they needed a beer before the Sharks game and left for a nearby bar.

The kids on the other side of me were getting punchy and asking their mom, "When are they going to light the tree?" It looked liked they were, but instead the chorale came back and sang a few more songs.

I looked at my watch. It was 6:10 PM. I needed to start heading to the train station soon. I could hang around another ten minutes. The chorale looked like it had another twenty minutes of material in them. I was starting to worry, when suddenly, by some divine intervention, they abruptly finished.

The weatherman came back up, with the mayor, to let everybody know, that "This is being timed with NBC 11's news broadcast and we are expected to light the tree at exactly 6:20 PM." I groaned, that was exactly when I needed to leave. I snapped another photo, wiped the raindrops from my glasses and waited. Farley was now talking about rehearsing the countdown to the tree lighting, stalling for time. We all counted down from 10 just for good measure, just in case none of us had ever witnessed this phenomenon at, oh, New Year's Eve.

The time finally came, the actual countdown went off without a problem and everybody cheered as the 55-foot tree was lit. I took a quick picture as I sprinted to the last shuttle heading for the train station.