A host of elves dressed in City of Midwest City attire have been hard at work in Joe B. Barnes Regional Park.
Eighteen years ago, Midwest City started a new Christmas tradition with the Holiday Spectacular and today that tradition is still going strong.
Every year, work starts earlier and earlier to pull off this holiday event which is one of the state’s largest animated light display.
Midwest City’s Holiday Spectacular is a huge undertaking by Joe Patterson and his staff.
Patterson is the city’s parks and recreation park project supervisor. He and six fulltime parks and recreation employees have been working since the beginning of October to put up all of the displays and lights.
But they have not been working alone, Patterson said.
They borrow up to three employees from the city’s street department, as well as hire anywhere from three to six seasonal employees.
Volunteers also pitch in to help put up lights and dislays, and their contributions continue when the Spectacular opens as greeters and givers of tasty candy cane treats.
Never been to the Spectacular? Well, then you are missing out.
If you want to be there when the lights get turned on, the kick-off event is set for 5:30 pm. Nov. 22 in the Century Martial Arts parking lot. Mayor Jack Fry and Santa Claus will be present, and Christmas caroling will take place until the lights are flipped on at 6 p.m.
'Spectacular' planners
Patterson and his crew have the Spectacular planned down to the tiniest light bulb. He said when the city added on the "Dancing Trees" display, this meant work had to start a little earlier.
"We start either the last week of September or no later than the first week in October," Patterson said.
Since December 2010, Patterson has overseen the Spectacular but this year is his eighth year on the lighting team.
Every year, the team gets better and better when it comes to their time management. "We’ve been fine tuning every year," Patterson said.
Display locations have changed since Patterson took over. He said he did not want the displays in the same spot every year and every year, the lighting team tries to add new lights.
"We want to give people more to look at," he said.
Patterson couldn’t pen down an exact number on the number of lights the display has.
"That would be a scary thought," adding if he had to guess, it would be over a million lights.
Many of those lights, like the old C7s, require maintenance, Patterson said, and each season, the city spends $3,500 to $6,000 to replace bulbs that have faded or broke.
Slowly but surely, the Spectacular is switching over to the new age of Christmas lighting with LED lights. These are less expensive to maintain and light.
Of all the displays in the park, Patterson said his favorite is the tunnel of lights, but he is also partial to the dancing trees, which is the most complex feature in the Spectacular.
With the help of a computer programmer and a laptop, the dancing trees flicker in sync to Christmas music, Patterson said.
Overall, the city workers in charge of the display love what they do, although it’s a lot of hard work, especially in cool weather conditions like this week.
See what’s in store for the 2013 Holiday Lights Spectacular beginning Nov. 22 through Dec. 30. The display is 1.5 miles long and features 90 displays, including 118 foot tree and Santa fly fishing by a 15 foot waterfall.
Horse drawn carriage rides are available on Fridays, Saturdays and the entire week before Christmas.
