November 27, 2008

It’s beginning to look a lot like... Christmas in the Park

San Jose volunteers ready Dec. 5 opening

By Carol Rosen
Editor

For nearly 30 years, San Jose residents have celebrated Christmas in the Park in our fair city. This year is no exception.

Hundreds of students gathered together in anticipation to begin setting up and decorating Cesar Chavez park Saturday morning for San Jose's annual celebration of Christmas. Photos by Luke Cunningham

But some of us may have wondered what, how long and how many people it takes to put on such an extraordinary, but free, display. Actually, it takes more than 500 volunteers and a whole year to put together each year’s display. And much of that work is dictated and worked on by a group of 20 volunteers and a city employee.

The city employee is Tom Trafton, the exhibit designer. There’s also Cindy Willard from Evergreen and Arlene Runel from Almaden, who are co-chairs of the volunteer committee plus a group of 18 others making up the board of directors for the volunteer organization. John Hershback is this year’s president and Marty Degutis, is vice president this year and will serve as president next year.

Trafton’s job is “quite an operation,” he says. He works out of a 32,000-square-foot shop producing 70 displays each containing five pieces of animation. He also works with Willard and Runel to coordinate the volunteers. He knows what he’s doing too, because he’s been at it for nearly 30 years.

“I started when I was in college in drama school working on set design. The first designer, Joe Cardinale, who taught set design also taught me how to do Christmas in the Park.” When Cardinale retired, Trafton kept at it honing his skills so that each year turns out bigger and better.

While the work goes on all year, the busy season begins in September with planning followed by work parties into October and early November at a warehouse on Senter Road. Early in the fall, not too many students show up to help, says Runel, estimating the number is between 30 and 75. But as the workdays increase, so do the volunteers; by the final weeks, around 250 high school students have come out to help.

Setup begins in mid-November while the weekend before Thanksgiving is “the big weekend” when volunteers come out and clean, paint, wash and set up everything. Some groups might be putting up the displays while others hang lights and garlands on poles, make bows and fix the gifts around the community tree. All of this happens prior to the decoration of up the 450 trees by groups sponsoring the trees. And, all must be finished prior to Friday night’s tree-lighting.

Cupertino High School students, from left, Michael Teng, Kevin Liu, William King and Diane Hwu, began setting up their garland to place around the windows of the souvenir shop for Christmas in the park in down town San Jose Saturday morning. Photos by Luke Cunningham

This year about 500 high school students turned out on Saturday at 9 a.m. to volunteer, cleaning and setting up the displays. Tree decorators, many from area schools, turn out to decorate their own trees. They registered to help in order to keep the numbers easy to work with. They were joined by more than 50 project leaders from San Jose State, and a few of their fellow fraternity members from UC Santa Cruz, who were in charge of various groups of the teens. The college students come from Beta Alpha Psi, Alpha Kappa Delta Phi and Alpha Phi Omega, business fraternities.

The students, from public and private high schools and from Key and Interact Clubs as well as other school groups, come from a variety of the schools including Cupertino, East Side, Leland, Pioneer, Oak Grove, Andrew Hill, Independence, Bellarmine, Presentation and Notre Dame. Archbishop Mitty High School has its own Wednesday morning workshop and brings down a busload of mostly sophomores with teachers. “It’s been a tradition for quite some time for Mitty,” said Runel.

Once all are assembled, groups of about 15 receive a short safety talk from Trafton. Once that’s complete they receive a button and can begin going to work. Each group is assigned to a college student project leader. While the teens are receiving their safety instructions, the college students, are assigned to particular displays, which they then instruct the teens to complete.

Degutis, who is from Blossom Valley area, provided a bit of history for the event, which she called a “San Jose tradition.”

The idea for the 29-year-old event began back in the 1980s when Don and Mary Lima began setting up a display in front of their mortuary on Willow Avenue. The display grew until the traffic flow required police assignments. They ended up donating the display to the city of San Jose, which used it in front of the old City Hall. But when the 1970s energy crisis hit, the display stopped.

Mario, right, a San Jose State student begins to read off the instructions for him and his crew of Cupertino High School students, who will begin decorating a designated area for San Jose's annual Christmas in the Park.

It was revived during Mayor Tom McEnery’s term and kept growing. Eventually, it grew so big it was moved downtown to today’s 2-acre site near Plaza de Cesar Chavez and has become the anchor for the city’s annual holiday display.

The 20-member board is responsible for raising all the money to maintain and operate the event. The city offers the volunteers the park and the warehouse. Council members often provide donations as well. For example, this year District 4’s Kansan Chu and District 6’s Pierluigi Oliverio are sponsoring trees. In addition, the event board receives about 257,000 hours of volunteer help, which consists of a combination of student and adult volunteers from all over the area including as far away as Fremont.

In addition, the board members also work hard. They put on fundraisers throughout the year, with the biggest being Christmas in July, a BBQ that last year was held at the Circle of Palms.

But the most fun is to see the children’s faces as they take in all the trees and decorations. All this work goes to “provide a gift of joy and magic for all and one of the last free events left,” says Trafton.

Christmas in the Park’s grand opening is set for Nov. 28. It begins at 4 p.m. with the Winter Wonderland opening ceremony followed at 5 by the official opening of the downtown ice rink. The event itself will begin at 5:30 p.m. followed by the televised tree lighting at 6.