Community Comes Together for Holiday Festivities
By Will Miller and Max Trexler, Staff Writers
Photos by Max Trexler
With the holiday season in full swing, fun meets festive at the “It's a Wonderful Life in Lafayette” holiday celebration where fundraisers, businesses, and Lafayette neighbors all come together for an evening of holiday cheer.
At the celebration on Sunday, Dec. 8, community attendees gathered in the Lafayette Plaza for activities including a tree lighting, a visit from Santa, as well as Stanley Middle School and Acalanes choir performances.
The Lafayette Chamber of Commerce has put on this event each year for over a decade and it has a large amount of local support with many businesses getting exposure as well as coming together to support the community.
“We have sponsored it since it started, so we helped create it and it has been 12 or 13 years so Branon Development and my real estate team, Dana Green Team, are the cofounders of the chamber so we have sponsored it ever year and we also sponsor all the little white lights in the town for the holidays,” cofounder of the event and realtor Dana Green said.
Throughout the years, community members have seen a growth in interest around the festivities.
“This year for example half an hour before it started we had 1000 people here. The first couple of years we had pouring rain and maybe 300 to 400 people. Now we will probably have 3500 people and about as much as we can fill,” Green said.
The event not only involves festivities, but it is also an opportunity for various community groups to come together.
“We are selling wreaths for Troop 402… [The money] goes to our group fundraising so we can plan our trips. I started this year and the troop has been doing it for five years,” Troop 402 scout Anjali Kesiraju said.
Community members who attended the event experienced festivities in the form of things like drawings, hot chocolate, and Santa hats while also having the opportunity to participate in fundraisers.
“We have been doing this for years, and primarily we have come out here for two reasons. One, to give out hot chocolate to kids, but also to have our raffle. Where we raffle off one of our projects we have been working on,” Rotary Club board member Skip McCowan said.
The Rotary Club plans on using the auctioned money to help the club with certain projects that give back to the community, something that was emphasized by the event as a whole.
“We've also helped Hope Solutions which is an apartment complex in Pleasant Hill which is a home for people who were formerly homeless. So we support them in many different ways. We just delivered Thanksgiving dinner to all the families in the project a couple weeks ago,” McCowan said.
The Acalanes choir attended the event again this year, adding music to the scene.
“We're going to be singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Twelve Days after Christmas which is a fun parody of the original song, and Season of Light,” Acalanes choir member and junior Tate Frase said.
The community ultimately expressed enjoyment with the festivities and pointed out the event’s role in prioritizing giving back to the community and coming together as neighbors.
“I think it is just really fabulous to see all the people in Lafayette get together for a community event where nobody is asking anybody to do anything. It’s just fun to meet your neighbors. Get to know everybody and celebrate the holidays. I think that's what we all need,” McCowan said.
