A Home-Grown Holiday Institution

Almost half a century ago, in an otherwise ordinary neighborhood next to the Ventura Freeway in Woodland Hills, some neighbors met over coffee to plan how to decorate their homes for Christmas.

What they hatched wasn’t much: buy some metal stovepipes (costing about $3.50 a pair in 1951), slap on some white paint and wrap them with red ribbons to create giant candy canes.

Those residents of Lubao Avenue, now indelibly dubbed “Candy Cane Lane,” could not have predicted that their tradition would grow and endure through four decades to become one of the city’s most popular and lasting holiday events, drawing tens of thousands of passersby to the elaborate lighting displays.

As the families of Candy Cane Lane prepare for another holiday season, old-timers such as Jean Harwood glow with a familiar mix of pride and excitement.

“Kids have gotten married and they’re bringing their own kids back,” said Harwood, a silver-haired grandmother who still lives in the house she and her husband built after they had to move from the path of the Ventura Freeway. “That’s the type of area this is.”

You name it, they’ve tried it on Candy Cane Lane: elaborate light shows, wooden nativity scenes, laboring elves, flying reindeer, a blue-robed Hanukkah Claus, a motorcycle-riding Kris Kringle and even a bubble machine outside the home of a neighbor who played in Lawrence Welk’s orchestra.

The decorating chores usually begin the first weekend after Thanksgiving, and the most serious designers begin work well in advance of that. Some labor clandestinely in closed garages, sawing and sanding for months.

Come September, Rose Marie Rush is carefully cutting and painting figures of elves, candy canes and sleighs that make up her family’s elaborate display on Lubao Avenue. “I change them every year,” Rush said. “We put our heart and soul out to the public.”

A block to the east, on Oakdale Avenue, Peter Borck’s family was joined by nearly a dozen friends on a recent weekend, stringing white lights along the front bushes and setting up a phalanx of candles on the lawn.

Candles, Borck said, are an Oakdale Avenue tradition that began decades ago when homeowners lined the street with “candles” fashioned out of cemented tires, stovepipes and a lightbulb.

Two nearby streets have been part of the tradition, as well. Penfield Avenue came to be known as “Caroler’s Way” because residents there have for years put up 4-by-8-foot placards labeled with the title of a Christmas carol. The carols are piped out to the street by stereo.

On Jamilla Avenue, which is known as “Avenue of the Bells,” residents erected miniature churches on their lawns. Jewish residents joined in with tiny synagogues aglow in blue lights.

At Candy Cane Lane’s height, in the 1950s and 1960s, residents held dinner parties with big pots of simmering stew. Mickey Rooney, a former resident, would march down the middle of the street, neighborhood children in tow, and plant the big, wooden sign announcing that Candy Cane Lane was open for business. Afterward, the actor would open his home to the neighborhood, serving punch and cookies.

By the 1970s, however, the candles and lights began to dim as new occupants moved in. And when the first Mideast oil crisis hit in 1973, Candy Cane Lane went dark in an energy-saving gesture prompted by a request from then-Mayor Tom Bradley.

By the late 1980s, vandalism turned into large-scale thievery with holiday hooligans wrecking displays and making off with wooden Santas. So many motorists jammed the neighborhood that the bottleneck affected traffic on the Ventura Freeway. Older residents bristled as visiting motorists shouted at them to get out of the way.

In 1994, the Northridge earthquake forced many residents from their homes. For some, this is the first Christmas at home since the quake. To help ease congestion this year, residents have agreed to turn off the lights at 10 p.m., said LAPD Officer Steve Kegley.

“When Christmas is over,” says Rush, “a part of me drops. You wish the decorations could stay up all year long.”