A 60-foot holiday tree is set to roll into the Old Sacramento Waterfront Thursday morning, kicking off a weeks-long process that ends with a public lighting ceremony on Nov. 25. The tapered white fir, hauled in from Siskiyou County, weighs roughly 12,000 pounds and will need a crane just to stand it up on K Street.
The tree is expected to arrive at approximately 7 a.m. Thursday at K Street between Front and Second Streets, according to The Sacramento Bee. Crews will have their work cut out for them: putting the fir in place is expected to take until about 9 a.m., with a crane from Maxim Crane Works doing the heavy lifting to secure it.
This year's tree comes from Carlton Christmas Trees, a Shasta County outfit that delivers the annual centerpiece. The tapered white fir is between 35 and 40 years old, with 9 feet of exposed trunk at its base. The same report notes the tree was cut above the snowline to ensure freshness, and that seedlings are planted in the area where it once grew.
How the Tree Gets Secured and Dressed Up
Once it's upright, the tree will be anchored in a below-ground tree stand rather than a surface base, a detail meant to keep it stable through weeks of foot traffic and weather on the waterfront. Decorating duties fall to a Stage 9 Exhibits team, working alongside Stage Nine Entertainment, which will assist with the tree's decorations.
The decorating crew isn't holding back on wattage. The report notes the team will use nearly 24,000 lights, 550 icicles and 400 strobes to transform the bare fir into the waterfront's holiday centerpiece. There's also a sports-adjacent twist: the tree will be lit purple on Sacramento Kings game nights.
When the Lights Actually Come On
The official lighting ceremony is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Nov. 25, and the Bee reports the season's first Theatre of Lights show will follow immediately afterward. Theatre of Lights has been a recurring fixture of Old Sacramento's holiday programming in past seasons, with Visit Sacramento describing it as culminating in the lighting of the waterfront's giant Christmas tree by St. Nick.
Previous iterations of the show have run about 20 minutes, blending a retelling of “'Twas the Night Before Christmas” with Sacramento history, according to KCRA. That station has also reported on past seasons where festivities opened on K Street at 5:30 p.m. ahead of a 6:15 p.m. show, ending with the tree lighting itself, and additional performances running on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays into late December.
For now, the countdown starts with Thursday's delivery. Once the crane sets the fir in its below-ground stand and the Stage 9 Exhibits crew wraps it in lights, icicles and strobes, Old Sacramento's waterfront centerpiece will be ready for its Nov. 25 debut.
