Christmas Tree Lane
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The lights were still up on the lane in January, when the Eaton fire roared through the tight-knit foothill community northeast of Los Angeles, killing 19 people and burning thousands of homes. As hurricane-force winds showered embers on the Christmas Tree Lane’s mile-long stretch of deodar cedars – which have been illuminated yearly for more than a century – it seemed almost impossible that the trees would survive. But they did.
Over 10 Saturday mornings, beginning in September, volunteers inspected hundreds of strands of lights and, using a resolutely low-tech system of pulleys and ropes, placed them among the branches. All this in the lead up to the December lighting ceremony, which drew a record-breaking 20,000 attendees out to commiserate, console, and find hope among the sparkling lights.
Story pitch and photography by Brandon Tauszik.
Published in the New York Times
I just moved back into my house, we had to get remediated. It has been really crazy and I'm just really excited about this. It's magical and it gives people a sense of hope from all the rubble and burns. It's just a magical day where we get to forget about all the fires and everything that happened and just have fun.
– Indie Roffman, volunteer
I used to live in Altadena. We plan on rebuilding and hopefully we'll be back for Christmas 2026. We spent 40 years making this house exactly the way we liked it, but now we’re starting all over. Christmas Tree Lane is a sort of a stress release and also a way of contributing back.
– Lawrence Glover, volunteer
Christmas Tree Lane is the defacto symbol of Altadena for a lot of folks. It was lit the first year that this kind of lighting was available to the public, in 1920. So this is the 105th anniversary. It's gonna be a little different this year because of all the loss that everybody suffered, we have to acknowledge that. Half of our board members lost their homes.
– Scott Wardlaw, President, Christmas Tree Lane Association