On the 23rd day before Christmas, with scores of chilly, anticipating, bundled-up children and their parents huddling together at the appointed hour of 6 o’clock last night in gleamingly lighted Town Plaza, Culver City magically turned into a winter wonderland with a giant city-sponsored Christmas Tree as its dazzling centerpiece.
It is supposed to be called a Holiday Tree, and last night, as the emcee Mayor Chris Armenta declared, was billed as a Holiday Gathering.
But a poll of a hundred and fifty children in the luminescent corridor between the Culver Hotel and the Pacific Theatres revealed that not one of them was awaiting anything resembling Holiday.
As one child said, “Aren’t the Fourth of July, Labor Day and New Year’s Day all holidays, too? Why can’t Christmas be called Christmas?”
Publicly, no one offered counter evidence.
The joyous red and green scene could have been mistaken for any community dozens of states east of Southern California.
It was a just-right setting to welcome the ageless Santa Claus, who could have been elected to either the City Council or the School Board by acclaim last night. After days of frigid temperatures, the weather was not too hot and not too cold.
Every person in the crowd, tall or small, came armed with a cell phone, and thousands of pictures were snapped — of a choir from Lin Howe School and its next-door campus, and Dr. Tony Spano’s Academy of Visual and Performing Arts singers from Culver City High School.
For a few minutes, the Christmas Gathering snappily recreated the runway to Christmas — not Holiday — the way it used to be when they were children.
A Star of the Evening
Mr. Armenta, the most dapper elected official in Culver City, arrived at Town Plaza not quite as bundled as the families surrounding him as he stood by a window of the historic Culver Hotel. He smiles often and laughs easily. Whether in Council Chambers or greeting the community in Town Plaza, he is thoroughly enjoying himself.
Attired in a light tan suit, crisp white shirt and perfectly knotted necktie, he was asked about Christmas rather than Holiday for himself, his wife Colleen and their college-age son Alex, in his third year.
“I have a very small family,” said the Mayor, “but every year, Christmas has been a time when we get together. Some relatives are in Las Vegas, others are here, and Christmas is an opportunity for us to get together with them and with friends. With our schedules, this is the one time of year when we can be in one place.
“It is really a mobile affair these days. We will have Christmas with the family here and then go over to Las Vegas.”
Not just the Mayor his wife and son reside in the Armenta household. “I have to include my two little pugs,” says the Mayor, “because they are part of the family, too.”
When he and his brother were children 40 years ago, the Mayor said that his primary image of Christmas was quite traditional, “a family affair with lots of food,” triggering another grand laugh. “No that there was an abundance if food every year,” said Mr. Armenta. “Kind of depended on the economy. But the important part was that we were all there together.”
