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One of Seattle鈥檚 most beloved and historic holiday displays 鈥� Candy Cane Lane in Ravenna 鈥� will open this coming Saturday. 成人X站 Newsradio stopped by Tuesday night to get a sneak peek at preparations, and to hear from the volunteer neighbors who are helping carry on a tradition now nearly 80 years old and counting.

It鈥檚 Christmas light season, and there are all kinds of fancy places you can go to see light displays 鈥� at Point Defiance, at Woodland Park, and 聽in Bellevue.

Candy Cane Lane is a little different. It鈥檚 a little more organic, a little more people-powered. And it鈥檚 been around awhile, since at least 1948, based on some old newspaper clippings 鈥� though there is some mystery around that exact date.

In other holiday light history, this year is the 50^th anniversary of the holiday season of 1973.聽 After the Yom Kippur War in Israel and Egypt in October of that year, an OPEC oil embargo followed, and America suffered a serious energy crisis. Gas prices went through the roof, and all over the United States, Americans were told to tone down and even entirely forego outdoor Christmas lights to save precious energy.

Locally, Seattle City Light worked with the media to encourage customers to skip lighted outdoor decorations. In November 1973, the Seattle Times published a long quote attributed to Mike Sharrar, coordinator of community affairs for Seattle City Light:

During the present energy crisis, Seattle City Light is discouraging any use of outdoor Christmas lighting. We hope that most of our customers, realizing the urgency of the present situation, will return to some of the older, more traditional forms of honoring the Christmas season and forego outdoor lighting. All government buildings and agencies, many community groups, retail stores and businesses have voluntarily decided not to light up this year. We hope their leadership, plus the pressure of public opinions from private citizens, will discourage the use of Christmas lighting throughout the area. Ultimately, indoor or outdoor lighting is the choice of every individual. At City Light we can only recommend wise usage, and trust the good sense of our citizen-owners to do what they think is best. The continued use of outdoor lighting through Seattle, as in the past, would further reduce or energy resources.

Even President Richard Nixon weighed in when he flipped the switch on the National Christmas Tree, to illuminate just a single light where in previous years there had been thousands of festive electric bulbs.

鈥淚n a way, I suppose one could say with only one light on the tree, this will be a very dreary Christmas,鈥� President Nixon told the audience gathered for the tree lighting. 鈥淏ut we know that isn鈥檛 true, because the spirit of Christmas is not measured by the number of lights on a tree, the spirit of Christmas is measured by the love that each of us has in his heart for his family, his friends, for his fellow Americans and for people all over the world.鈥�

Fortunately, no one at any level of government is calling for toned-down Christmas lights this year.

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And this comes as especially good news on Candy Cane Lane, a neighborhood display that involves about 25 homes on a short little street called , which is off Ravenna Boulevard around 21^st Avenue NE, 聽just north of Greek Row, and down the hill toward University Village. Visitors can drive through Candy Cane Lane in their cars (turn off your headlights, please) or walk through on the sidewalk, or on the roadway itself during three designated walk-only nights.

How and when Candy Cane Lane came to be, and who exactly founded it, are a bit of a mystery.

The first year might have been 1948. That鈥檚 when holiday lights on Park Road were first mentioned in the Seattle Times as part of the newspaper鈥檚 鈥淐hristmas Trail鈥� contest. One version of the origin story goes back a few years earlier than that and has a non-lighted decoration effort on Park Road emerging during World War II, when fear of enemy attack, and not an energy crisis, dictated evening blackouts. A big book of neighborhood notes and meeting minutes that might offer more details on the history went missing several years ago. Among other facts, that book might reveal if Candy Cane Lane also went dark in 1973.

Whenever it happened and whoever the players were, Candy Cane Lane鈥檚 history does seem related to outdoor holiday decoration contests the Seattle Times ran every year (except during World War II) from 1927 to 1968. Candy Cane Lane won accolades in that contest on many occasions from the late 1940s into the 1960s.

The signature piece of physical evidence that ties the history together 鈥� and which is the inspiration for the name聽 鈥� are the six-foot long metal candy canes on display, one at each house, on Candy Cane Lane.

Maggie Sweeney has lived on Candy Cane Lane since 2001.

鈥淚f you look, every house will have a candy cane and it looks just like an old metal pipe that’s painted,鈥� Sweeney told 成人X站 Newsradio. 鈥淎nd when people move, that is the one thing that stays with the house. Many of us have these original old candy canes, and that is how [it] got to be called Candy Cane Lane.鈥�

Maggie鈥檚 husband David Sweeney brought the couple鈥檚 candy cane out from their garage.

鈥淚t’s made out of a six-inch stove pipe and we got it from the owner of the house when we moved in,鈥� David Sweeney told 成人X站 Newsradio as he displayed the vintage hand-made decoration. 鈥淪o it might be 60 years old at this point, I honestly don’t know.

鈥淚t鈥檚 red and white striped,鈥� Sweeney continued. 鈥淓very year, I threaten to repaint it and fix it up, yet I don’t seem to find the time, and then out it goes again.鈥�

The annual installation of the street鈥檚 famous icon takes mere moments, Sweeney said.

鈥淪o you just put a spike in the ground, and then you just put the candy cane over the top,鈥� Sweeney explained. 鈥淎nd that’s what people see when they drive through the circle.鈥�

The candy canes are a remarkable relic, apparently made from off-the-shelf straight and elbow sections of stovepipe, the kind used to connect a wood stove to a chimney, and probably picked up at a hardware store nearly 80 years ago. It鈥檚 these candy canes, Maggie Sweeney says, that figure into the origin story related to World War II, when lighted decorations were forbidden.

Along with one official candy cane, each house also has a particular set of decorations created, installed and maintained by the family that lives in that house. Think painted plywood reindeer, strings of colored lights, modern inflatables and other sorts of traditional household holiday decorations.

The centerpiece of Candy Cane Lane is a large community-built decoration in the traffic circle at the top of the street. This show-stopper features a big rotating structure like a carousel, spun by an electric motor hidden in the holly bush, with colorful decorative panels and lighting (this year the theme is The Nutcracker; it changes each year based on multiple sets of decorative panels). To add aural entertainment to the visual splendor, there are Christmas carols playing on a six-CD changer and blasting from outdoor speakers at two locations along the lane.

If all of this sounds sophisticated and high-tech, then this story has failed to communicate the true nature of Candy Cane Lane.

Maggie Sweeney says Candy Cane Lane is, more than anything, 鈥渉omespun.鈥�

鈥淚f you’re looking for a big light display, this is not the place to go,鈥� Sweeney said. 鈥淵ou’re going to come here for tradition. You’re going to come here for community. Most of the people walk through鈥� and get hot cocoa from the little store across Ravenna Boulevard.

鈥淲e like to pass out candy canes,鈥� Sweeney continued. 鈥淥ne thing we don’t do is we don’t accept any money. We’ve really stuck to the whole non-commercial aspect of being just a neighborhood place.鈥�

鈥淎nd we use LED lights now, in case anybody’s wondering,鈥� Sweeney added. 鈥淎t one point, someone accused us of being 鈥榯he Las Vegas of Seattle.鈥欌��

Like Sin City, Candy Cane Lane is not without its darker moments, such as the theft on three separate occasions of an inflatable Grinch; none of the three has ever been recovered. But, for the most part, say the neighbors, Candy Cane Lane is a happy place each year, mostly untouched by the mayhem of the outside world.

One of the most amazing things about Candy Cane Lane is the fact that it is all run by volunteers and that somehow, the tradition has carried on year after year for decades. Instructions about how to set up or about what goes where are mostly not written down anywhere. This neighborhood project, which nobody alive can remember how it got started, somehow survives and thrives and gradually evolves behind the scenes and then reappears, pretty much looking exactly like it did the year before, in time for every holiday season.

And though Candy Cane Lane is fiercely non-commercial, they do collect canned and other non-perishable food items for charity and brought in two tons of food last year for the University Food Bank.

Joseph Manalang is another Candy Cane Lane neighbor and one of the organizers. Back in October 2009, he and his wife 鈥� who was pregnant with twins at the time 鈥� unsuspectingly bought their house on Park Road.

The couple was told about Candy Cane Lane, but it seems like they didn鈥檛 really 鈥済et it.鈥�

鈥淚’m like, 鈥楽ure I like Christmas. I’ll put up some lights,鈥欌�� Manalang told 成人X站 Newsradio, describing how he responded to the real estate agent that October.

Then, December came. The couple wasn鈥檛 planning to move into their new home until January, but they stopped by to the holiday event in person.

鈥淚 had no idea until we walked the street what was going on,鈥� Manalang said. 鈥淎nd we were like, 鈥極h no, what did we get ourselves into?鈥�

What they got into was Candy Cane Lane, and both Joseph and his wife fell in love with living there. They are now among the biggest boosters of the work parties that have happened the past two weekends, and that will culminate this Saturday morning in time for a 4:00 p.m. official start on Saturday afternoon.

One thing that emerges in speaking with Maggie Sweeney, Joseph Manalang and several other neighbors who stopped by is that Park Road is a very special neighborhood not just during the holidays but year-round.

And the roots of all that specialness, what can only be described as 鈥渃ommunity,鈥� is all because of a Christmas light display that dates back at least as far as the Truman administration.

鈥淲e say 鈥榊eah, it鈥檚 a gift to the community鈥� to give something for people to celebrate, but I think it’s really a gift to us,鈥� Manalang said. 鈥淏ecause of Candy Cane Lane, we all come together, we all decorate our houses, we all decorate the circle as a community.鈥�

Because of that, we know all of our neighbors,鈥� Manalang continued. 鈥淭hat’s got to be rare in this time in Seattle. Who knows all their neighbors? My kids have been in half these houses. Everybody gets along.鈥�

鈥淚 mean, it’s pretty cool,鈥� he said.

And thanks to Joseph Manalang and Maggie Sweeney and their neighbors, all of us get to experience and see our own share of that coolness 鈥� that often invisible magic of a strong community 鈥� every holiday season, too.

IF YOU GO

Candy Cane Lane opens this Saturday, December 2, 2023 and runs through the evening of January 1, 2024. The lights are turned on from 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and from 4:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays.

They collect donations of food and other non-perishable items for the University Food Bank.

Walk-only nights will take place on three Thursdays: December 7, December 14 and December 21. The Husky Marching Band will perform on Thursday, December 7.

For more information, please visit the

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle鈥檚 Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O鈥橞rien, read more from him鈥�here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast聽here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks鈥�here.