Piedmont Park's Light Up the Season returns Sunday, November 22, 2026, bringing back the free lighting ceremony for the park's 50-foot Great Tree, Menorah, and Kinara, and adding a brand-new lantern parade that will wind its way around Lake Clara Meer. The afternoon kicks off at 3:30 p.m. with a lantern-making workshop, followed by a 5 p.m. parade and the lighting celebration itself in the Meadow.
A Second Year for a New Atlanta Tradition
The Piedmont Park Conservancy launched Light Up the Season in November 2025 as a new holiday celebration for the park, making this year's gathering just its second annual occurrence, according to WSB Radio. Before last year, the park did not host a unified multi-faith holiday lighting ceremony, meaning the combined Great Tree, Menorah, and Kinara lighting is still a relatively fresh addition to Atlanta's December calendar. As Secret Atlanta reports, this year's edition folds in the lantern-making workshop and parade as entirely new elements built on top of that foundation.
The lantern-making workshop begins at 3:30 p.m. and includes live music and holiday cheer, per the same outlet's account. At 5 p.m., the lantern parade steps off from Greystone, circles Lake Clara Meer, and marches into the Meadow, where the lighting celebration follows immediately after.
Seed & Feed Marching Abominable Leads the Parade
Leading this year's lantern march will be the Seed & Feed Marching Abominable, a volunteer community street band founded in Atlanta in 1974 and known citywide for its high-energy brass music and whimsical costumes, according to Creative Loafing. Beyond its street performances, the band also operates a 501(c)(3) endowment that funds music education grants for local Atlanta-area school programs, and it marked its 50th anniversary in 2024 while continuing that community outreach, per the DeKalb History Center.
The workshop portion of the event unfolds at Greystone. From there, the parade route traces the shoreline of Lake Clara Meer, an 11.5-acre artificial lake created for Atlanta's 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition, a defining event in shaping the park's modern layout, per the American Historical Association.
Filling a Void Left by a Retired Atlanta Classic
The timing carries extra weight for Atlanta's holiday traditions. The city's 74-year-old Great Tree Lighting tradition, which originally launched at Rich's department store in 1948, ended in December 2023 when Macy's retired its annual ceremony at Lenox Square, leaving a void in the city's traditional holiday calendar, FOX 5 Atlanta reported at the time. Piedmont Park's Light Up the Season stepped into that gap in late 2025, introducing simultaneous lightings for a Christmas tree, Hanukkah Menorah, and Kwanzaa Kinara as a multi-faith alternative.
Piedmont Park itself spans 189 acres in Midtown Atlanta and operates under a public-private partnership, with the city retaining land ownership while the nonprofit Piedmont Park Conservancy handles daily stewardship, as Hoodline detailed in its coverage of this year's arts festival. The Conservancy, founded in 1989 by community members to halt park deterioration, now raises over $5 million annually and oversees roughly 90 percent of daily park maintenance and security, having raised more than $110 million in private funds since its founding, according to the Piedmont Park Conservancy. Doug Widener has served as the Conservancy's President and CEO since September 2023, following the retirement of long-time CEO Mark Banta, per the organization's own leadership page.
Free Admission Stands Out Amid Rising Festival Costs
Light Up the Season remains free and open to the public. The Conservancy's continued reliance on private fundraising and membership support allows it to keep large-scale community programming like Light Up the Season free even as those pressures mount elsewhere in the city's event calendar.
After the lighting celebration wraps in the Meadow, nearby Park Tavern will host a family holiday movie and hot cocoa, along with additional activities to extend the evening, according to Secret Atlanta's rundown of the day's schedule. Between the 3:30 p.m. workshop, the 5 p.m. parade, and the lighting ceremony that follows, organizers are positioning the full afternoon as a single, free holiday outing for Midtown families and visitors alike.
