Downtown Thanksgiving Leads into a County Christmas

By Ed Fuentes
Published: Wednesday, November 21, 2007, at 05:35PM

LA Holiday Harmonies Girls Choir Ed Fuentes

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — While we wait wishing for a Holiday parade that could whisk Santa from the crossroads at 9th and Main to Chick Hearn Court and L.A. Live; or finalize the date for a get-together of Downtown bloggers and readers at Pershing Square––dubbed by Shannon as “Bloggers on Ice”––there are Downtown holiday traditions already to plan for, like some of these brought to you by the County of Los Angeles.

The County’s Official Tree Lighting Ceremony will be held at 5pm this Monday, November 26, at the Music Center Plaza. Supervisor Mike Antonovich and the Music Center host Los Angeles County’s official tree, expected to top off at 50 feet. The lighting of the tree will feature a choir performance by students from Salem Lutheran Elementary School, music by The Jumpin’ Joz Band and free hot chocolate provided by Patina Group (while supplies last). NBC4’s Fritz Coleman is now slated to broadcast live from the tree lighting.

While the tree has been Downtown for a while, some traditions aren’t newly arrived. Though not strictly holiday related, the season finds the start of the Monday Evening Concerts series’ first year Downtown. Begun on a Silverlake rooftop in 1939, the series was held at LACMA from 1965 until 2006, but starts its run at Colburn School’s Zipper Hall on December 3 at 8pm. The show features the U.S. Premiere of “Agnus Dei, Op.84” and the West Coast Premiere of “Das Andere, Op.49” mixed in a program with Igor Stravinsky’s “In memoriam Dylan Thomas.” The County connection? Partial funding is provided through the County Arts Commission.

Farther down the calendar is the 48th Annual L.A. County Holiday Celebration, the free six-hour live show with 45 performing groups held on Christmas Eve. Local choirs, music ensembles, and dance companies from southern California will perform in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion from 3:00-9:00 p.m. on Monday, December 24. It’s a gift from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to the community at large and produced by the County Arts Commission. Not only is admission free, so is the parking under the Music Center.

From all of us at blogdowntown, have a good Thanksgiving.

Harmonies Girls Choir from Olvera St. Photo by Ed Krieger. Courtesy of the LA County Holiday Celebration



Comments

1
Dennis Smith writes:

Here's hoping you all had a fine Thanksgiving.

Looking down the road towards Christmas, I would like to encourage folks to participate in Downtown's most traditional celebration of the holiday by joining the nightly procession of shepherds and herald angels walking the narrow lanes of Olvera Street in the evenings leading up to December 24. This is "Las Posadas" and it re-enacts the biblical account of Joseph and Mary searching for sanctuary as they returned to Bethlehem. The weeklong commemoration reaches its climax on Chritmas Eve with the Holy Family ending its search and the birth of the baby Jesus. All of this is performed with simple grandeur as the costumed cast is accompanied by musicians and spectators are beckoned to participate and sing along while actually joining the procession of pilgrims that follow the amateur enactors made up mostly of family members and friends of the merchants of Olvera Street. This family friendly affair usually includes a pinata for the kids and hot drinks like chocolate or champurrado served by the folks putting on the show. Many families make a night of it by combining a visit to the adjacent La Placita church or waiting a few hours to attend Midnight Mass at the Cathedral. The ceremony ends by 9:00 or 9:30 and is easily accessed by taking the subway to Union Station. In years past it was free to ride the train on Christmas Eve.

This ceremony has been conducted at La Placita for more than seventy years and was used as the background story for Leo Politi's famous children's book, "Pedro and the Angel of Olvera Street"

No celebrities, no spotlights, no live coverage featuring Patt Morrison but its the closest thing to that ephemeral warm-all-over "Charlie Brown Christmas" kind of moment that Downtown can provide.

# on Nov.23.2007 AT 10:52 AM

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