I’ll Be Home for “Chritsmas”

A. J. Urquidi escapes from L.A. to uncover lovable Christmas goofery and holly-jolly IP infringements at Candy Cane Lane in Pacific Grove.

By A. J. UrquidiDecember 29, 2024

CANDY CANE LANE, Pacific Grove, December 7–31, 2024.

In my estimation, inflatable Santas and light-lattice reindeer from Target make for uninspired ways to maximize your electricity bill in winter months.

If you live in Los Angeles and observe Christmas-adjacent holidays, you’ve probably noticed scattered neighborhoods where homeowners communally dress their properties and parks for public enjoyment each December; my favorites tend to combine enough imaginative copyright violations to make me feel like a 1990s kid again, back before I knew the meaning of cease-and-desist letter. I only recently learned about the Newport Beach displays, but over years of pandemic boredom, I explored cozy South Bay Christmas lights in Torrance, an under-the-radar decorations mecca in Woodland Hills, and century-old drive-through magic in Altadena.

I keep returning to the latter, Christmas Tree Lane, because Pasadena’s northern neighbor boasts an intriguing hodge-podge of L.A. historical style and roadside kitsch. Locals bedazzle Santa Rosa Avenue’s deodar cedars—huge coniferous trees that once lined the driveway of the city’s co-founder—with strings of lights, using massive ladders, a dedicated canopy-level power supply, and several weekends of volunteer labor. At the head of the street is that co-founder’s modest home, the maybe-haunted Woodbury-Story House, across from the Victorian rotunda-topped Andrew McNally mansion, both popular filming locations. The corner opposite from McNally hosts the modernist Altadena Library building, whose Boyd Georgi design fuses its windowy study space with exterior foliage, and the no-introduction-necessary Bunny Museum is just a few hops away. Down the street, you can visit sci-fi visionary Octavia Butler, Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, and Manhattan Project dabbler Richard Feynman outside an eerily labyrinthine mausoleum. But this sounds more like an advert for the weird tourism of the surrounding neighborhood—the holiday road itself doesn’t offer much besides the titular trees and threeish homes who put extra effort into their gutter lighting.

Historical value aside, Altadena’s cedars present a wholly different experience from the yard modification on view six hours north in the Central Coast town of Pacific Grove. While visiting my childhood home near Monterey for Christmas vacation, I stopped by Pacific Grove’s own elaborately decorated Candy Cane Lane, which taught me to appreciate the comical, heart-warming appeal of hand-painted ingenuity that was more of a rarity in Southern California.

Residents within the triangular zone between Forest, Beaumont, and Morse make it their December mission to appropriate whatever pop-cultural, holiday, or ecological ideas they can imagine and then turn their dwellings into the living avatar of that concept, especially if it involves Minions. Plywood, detail, and elf-bow grease are the main ingredients of these domestic imaginaria—I spotted three-foot-tall LEGO-folk and dinosaur cutouts, a working model candy-train flanked by the Kool-Aid Man with Calvin and Hobbes, and several Peanuts variations (the pond ice-skating lights were an outside-the-box flourish). The annual Heat and Snow Miser tableau reminded me that their Rankin/Bass special exists; the deep-sea-denizens house blessed passersby with an illuminated jumbo squid and its vampire cousin, plus jellies and dragonfish, a bestiary fit for the Monterey Bay Aquarium down the hill. One homeowner (accidentally?) arranged their big wooden candles to read “MERRY CHRITSMAS,” a goof that elevates the homely entertainment to a new level of hilarity that you just can’t reach with a hollow nylon penguin strapped to an air pump.

The centerpiece of everything was Platt Park, the grassy nexus that transforms yearly into a chaotic collage of kiddie cultural signifiers once the air grows nippy. This time, one edge of the park collected Sesame Street’s rogues’ gallery, straddling a home-engineered Ferris wheel that cycled Pluto, Sylvester and Tweety, Charlie Brown, and other random intellectual property. The park’s upper side showcased several photo-op boards with empty face holes, involving Santa Claus, sleighs, and gingerbread houses, as well as a jerking train engine amid core Disney mascots-who-will-not-be-named, to spare the wrath of their litigious creators—let’s just say one scene involved a black light, caterpillar, and Cheshire cat. A PVC light tunnel bisected the park’s middle, perfect for sultry couple selfies, many of which I barged into and unwittingly joined the supporting cast of. Platt’s other edge stored giant midcentury robo-chomping soldier “Pierre,” a CCL heritage icon who elicited several toddlers’ shrieks of “No, Mommy, I’m scared!” Next to him, attendees sacrificed their clean UGGs to liquid mud, a rite of passage, to snap a picture of a newer favorite of mine: a cartoonish array of Harry Potter characters, with facial expressions and body language that could best be described as disconcerting.

That willingness to flaunt uncanny imperfections is what makes the CCL operation so endearing in contrast to SoCal’s sanitized, store-bought dioramas. Each December, the timeless expression on the Grinch’s dog’s face will bring you more joy than any WeHo Kardashian billboard or Del Amo mall Santa ever could. So stop by Candy Cane Lane if you’re ever in the Monterey area at Christmastime. Just remember—every time a toddler walks by Pierre and screams, a Minion gets its wings.

¤

Photos by A. J. Urquidi.

LARB Short Takes live event reviews are published in partnership with the nonprofit Online Journalism Project and the Independent Review Crew.