Each November for many years, the City of Grosse Pointe has hosted a festive community event, presenting its beautifully decorated Christmas tree. This year, the event took place on Nov. 21.
An attraction at the event people look forward to is the South choir performing Christmas songs for the crowd. Ben Showalter ’26 has participated in this event through choir for all four years of high school and loves the environment at the tree lighting.
“It’s fun,” Showalter said. “You get to see how many people are really in the Grosse Pointe and interact with the community, and I feel like Christmas songs are my favorite to sing.”
Along with the choir, there are plentiful other activities to appeal to Grosse Pointers of all ages such as lawn games, food and beverages and photo spots. For the past two years, June Krall ’36 has enjoyed attending the tree lighting, and participating in the games with other children from the community.
“I played tic-tac-toe with my friends, and I also liked seeing my friends,” Krall said.
As the tree lighting is such a valued tradition, making it live up to the expectations of the community was not a light task for Grosse Pointe’s new Parks and Recreation Coordinator Chad Murphy. In his first year planning the event, Murphy was happy with how it turned out and is ready to improve it for the future.
“The only thing I would change is to add more to it,” Murphy said. “Try and get more people to stay downtown a little longer in the village, and do some shopping and little things like that.”
Even with a few minor changes this year, the same community environment from years past remained. Krall comes back each year to enjoy the tradition with her community.
“We all stood around the tree,” Krall said. “We would count down ‘three, two, one’ and then it would be lit.”
Seeing the way the community came together to have fun together, made any chaos along the way worth it for Murphy.
“The crowd was great,” Murphy said. “Anything that was going wrong behind the scenes I don’t think anyone noticed, so that’s always a plus.”
While many of the attractions that people love are maintained, keeping the event fresh and exciting each year keeps the crowd returning and growing every year. Showalter took notice of the increased community attendance this year, and looks forward to seeing how the event progresses in the years to come.
“I think it’s better than years past,” Showalter said. “I thought there were a lot, maybe three times, more people than usual. I think the junior mayor and his little brother who lit the tree did a spectacular job.”
