How a California neighborhood’s holiday lights bring a community together

My go-to place for holiday lights is the Los Angeles County Arboretum. For $30, I can walk through a cathedral of tiny white lights and wander in a field of tulip sculptures aflame with color. It’s a joyous outing for family and friends during dark December days.

But this year, the Arboretum canceled its Lightscape because of a construction project. I understood, but it felt a bit like the Grinch stealing Christmas. Then I remembered the annual neighborhood “Light Up” just up the hill from my front door.

It’s legendary. Like millions of people across the country, residents in Pasadena’s Upper Hastings Ranch neighborhood decorate their houses for the holidays. But this enclave of palm trees and ramblers is different. It has decked its homes as a group project for over 70 years. Joy bridges generations. Adults who visited as kids now bring their own children. Yesteryear’s wooden Santa lawn ornaments mix with synchronized LED lights as a bus from a senior center rolls down the glowing streets.

“I’ve been coming here since a kid, and now I’m bringing my daughter here,” says Jason Sancho. He, his wife Aiko, and their daughter are parked in front of the Harbeck family home on Tropical Avenue. Windows open, they’re watching a multi-media, wowie-zowie light show as a recording of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus punctuates the air. Two years ago, the Harbecks won $50,000 in a national lights contest. Mr. Sancho plans to visit four more times. “It’s an awesome house,” he says.

The neighborhood Light Up started in 1951, when many homes were owned by World War II veterans, who bought them with GI loans. Residents first put out paper bag luminaries, which quickly evolved into themed street decorations and a competition. The local grocer awarded a turkey or ham to those with the best decorations. Today, the neighborhood association still hands out awards – bells that designate the residents’ top choice; the most humorous; most religious; and the best use of lights and theme.

Sarah Wedel, walking her dog on a recent afternoon with her neighbor Prashanti Thompson, recalls driving around Upper Hastings Ranch as a kid. Her parents folded down the back seats of their car and slid a mattress in so the children could sip cocoa and admire the lights from their makeshift bed on wheels.

Eventually, Ms. Wedel bought her grandparents’ home here. When her own children were little, they would wake from afternoon naps to catch the lights just as they were coming on. “It’s very sweet,” she says about the neighborhood at this time of year.

Now that their kids are bigger, the two women are improvising on the tradition by hosting a walking hot-chocolate party to see the displays. “The tradition’s grown on us in a really beautiful way,” says Ms. Thompson.

When her family moved here in 2013, she found a wooden cutout of a painted penguin in the garage and asked her realtor to contact the previous owners. Turns out the penguin lives permanently in the garage, passed down from homeowner to homeowner. That’s one aspect that hasn’t changed, with illuminated cutouts of Santas, reindeer, Christmas trees, angels, and other figures lining the streets according to theme.

The two friends have stopped to talk on Carriage House Road, where the crowning jewel of the holiday light show stands – a three-level property where every inch twinkles, right up to the tops of the palm trees. Last week, a Pasadena bicycling club of 44 riders returned to this spot on their annual holiday tour, gazing up at the bedazzling mass of color.

“It’s really nice to feel inspired by the lights and that you’re all experiencing something together,” says Abraham Perez-Negron, the ride leader. “It lights up everybody’s face.”

That’s exactly what the owner wants.

“Christmas makes me happy,” says Hourig Baghdadlian. Before she moved into this house in 2012, she used to bring her children to see the lights. Now, she’s spreading the joy herself. “I like to decorate my inside; I like to decorate my outside. It brings a smile to everybody’s face,” she laughs.

Each year, she adds more lights, which now take two months to install. When she drives up to her front gate at night, people clap. Her UPS and FedEx delivery drivers bring their families. She’s also mindful of her neighbors because visitors sometimes trample their property. Traffic can pile up.

“My husband said, ‘You know, don’t go crazy this year,’ because we think about our neighbors too.” She bought only one thing this year: A giant, red Christmas ball – the cherry on top.

There’s no requirement to decorate, though some residents mention social pressure. And the amount of decoration has waxed and waned over the years.

Still, people come from all over to Upper Hastings Ranch and other neighborhoods that take on holiday personas at the end of the year – like Christmas Tree Lane in nearby Altadena, Sparkleball Lane in Fullerton, and Candy Cane Lanes in El Segundo and Woodland Hills. That’s where my Monitor colleague Ali Martin checked out the decorations last week.

The Woodland Hills display winds through an eight-block cluster of streets that were home to walnut groves when the tradition began in the early 1950s. Just three houses stood on Lubao Street back then when those neighbors gathered to make their street festive for the holidays.

Around the corner on Jumilla Avenue, cars line the dark street, their shadowy silhouettes interrupting a backdrop of twinkling lawns and spotlit Christmas characters. Snow, here, is imagined – luminescent in radiant dots covering white tarps. Bluey and friends stand watch on one balcony; The Grinch makes more than one appearance; Nativity scenes evoke the holiday’s spiritual roots.

The greetings are clear: Merry Christmas, all are welcome. It’s the season of charity, of love.

That’s the draw for Maria Tello. “Once you come in here, it changes all your perspective,” she says. “I’m not like a very Christmasy person, but I mean, if I feel it, I’m pretty sure that people that like this are very happy.”

Ms. Tello and her family drove in from Reseda, about 15 minutes away, and parked nearby to meander these streets on foot, hot chocolate in hand, pajamaed children in tow.

Four-year-old Liam is happy – and that’s why the family keeps coming back, says Ms. Tello, with a grateful nod to the homeowners.

“Thank you,’’ she says.

Monitor Reporter Ali Martin contributed to this story from Los Angeles.