What appeared to be the largest ever crowd enjoyed the opening of Christmas Tree Lane Saturday evening, kicked off by a high-energy parade that featured dignitaries, local high school dancers, the combined Ceres Unified School District band and numerous floats from businesses, church and youth groups.
Hours before the open air event, countless families with wide-eyed children flocked to the Christmas Festival at the Ceres Community Center for crafts, cookies and pictures with Santa and Mrs. Claus. The city of Ceres Recreation Department moved up the festival starting time to 1 p.m. and closed out at 4 p.m. to give city staff time to transition to the parade route.
The festival drew families who posed for pictures with Santa Claus, who had a strong resemblance to Councilman Daniel Martinez. Mrs. Claus – played by Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra – had them smiling as she handed out candy canes.
Families also enjoyed free refreshments, such as cookies, and face painting in the large assembly room of the Community Center. A number of commercial booths were set up, including those for Ceres Pediatric Dentistry, Ride the S bus service, AT&T, Crunch Fitness and Ceres Partnership for Healthy Families. Outside the center, pizza slices were sold at the Dollar Slice 209 vendor wagon.
Before the parade commenced at 7 p.m., folks were forced to park and walk several blocks to get to Henry Avenue and Vaughn Street, known as Christmas Tree Lane during December, a tradition of lights and yard displays that started in December 1961. Among those strolling the lane – closed off for the night to vehicular traffic – were Alvaro Franco and his wife and their two children in tow.
A large crowd enjoyed the parade that reversed the direction of travel. Dignitaries like School Board members and others rode aboard an authentic 1907 San Francisco trolley car owned by Shane Parson.
Vice Mayor Daniel Martinez, who played Santa riding aboard the Ceres Police armored SWAT vehicle, had high praises for city staff for growing the event.
“I remember a few years ago when the parade was maybe four or five floats and there was no plan on it growing,” said Martinez. “It was quite outstanding to see how many people participated this weekend and how much community involvement we had.”
The parade featured car clubs, the entire Ceres Jr. Bulldogs teams and high school cheerleaders and dancers.
Once the parade was over, a crush of folks moved down the lane to check out yards like the one decorated by Daniel Harold and Jasmine Hernandez. The couple chose red and white lights in keeping with the school colors of their alma mater, Ceres High School. The couple said they spent three or four hours a day for a week putting up lights and other decorations.
“It’s a lot of work but it’s fun and it’s exciting seeing all the people,” said Hernandez.
This year is the seventh Christmas Tree Lane owner experience for Daniel Harold, who is a 2016 Ceres High graduate.
Kay Podvin and an energetic bunch of kids from the Adventures youth group at Ceres Seventh-day Adventist Church were busy directing folks to the driveway of Brittany and Justin Cook where free home-baked cookies and cups of hot cocoa were being given out.
“This is our ninth year we have been doing this,” said Podvin. “This is my little ministry to the neighbors. I wanted to do this as a welcoming thing. I do this because I want to spread God’s love and this is our way of doing that. People love it. This is what Christmas is all about.”
Son-in-law Justin chimed in: “And you can tell in today’s world love is becoming harder and harder to find.”
He was stunned when a couple of kids, aged about 10-12 years old, offered to pay money which was refused.
Podvin is a cook and has been “crazy baking for the last week or so.”
As of 6:45 p.m. the group had handed out over 600 cookies and passed out 450 cups of hot chocolate and vowed to continue until they ran out of cups.
“I probably did about a thousand cookies.”
Others contributed cookies, napkins and the makings for chocolate drinks.
The Cooks decorated their yard with a Star Wars theme as they have in past years.
While the residents get a kick out of giving families a worthwhile experience, there are its drawbacks to living on Christmas Tree Lane during the entire month. A key drawback, noted Justin Cook, is “basically not being able to go outside your house once it’s dark – unless you want to wait 40 minutes to get in line just to get out to go get fast food and then 40 minutes to come all the way back.” He’s learned to get everything the household needs before it gets dark. “Once you’re in, you’re in,” he added.
Another drawback is the trash left behind up and down the street. Social media was abuzz on Sunday after the parade remarking at how much trash was littering the area from folks who neglected to place their trash in the large trash containers stationed throughout the area.
