Tree-lighting ushers in the holiday season

COSTA MESA — For the first hour of Monday’s annual ceremony at Town Center Park, it loomed over the bright stage below — a 95-foot silhouette of a fir tree, with thin branches barely visible on the edges.

Then came the moment of truth. As hundreds sat in white folding chairs and others camped on blankets along the grassy hill, Corona del Mar’s Olympic silver-medalist skater Sasha Cohen and actor Hal Landon Jr. summoned the children of the Segerstrom family onstage to turn on the switches to illuminate South Coast Plaza’s holiday tree.

“Are you ready?” Cohen asked the audience. “Are you ready to see that big tree lit?”

As the crowd counted down — “Five … four … three … two” — a section of the tree glowed with each number. At “one,” the star on the top shone and a row of lights glistened on top of the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel and the office building across the park.

For the last 25 years, South Coast Plaza has kicked off the holiday season with a tree-lighting ceremony in Town Center Park, located across the street from the shopping center. This year, the All-American Boys Chorus was on hand to sing half a dozen holiday classics, while Santa Claus and his elves made an appearance and distributed candy canes to the crowd.

South Coast Plaza received its tree this year on Oct. 25, as Vito’s Custom Christmas Trees imported it from Mt. Shasta. To fill out the tall white fir, the woodsmen brought some smaller branches and attached them to the trunk. In all, the tree held around 20,000 lights.

Landon, who has played the lead in “A Christmas Carol” at South Coast Repertory for 27 years, joked during a short speech about whether his miserly character would approve of the festivities.

“I’m not sure what Ebenezer Scrooge would think about so many people having fun at Christmas time,” he said.

Melissa Eggerling, a designer who lives in Costa Mesa, attended the ceremony with her two small children, Isabel, 4, and Gabriele, 3. She put it on her calendar every year, she said, because it was a family favorite.

“The kids, their eye level barely catches the bottom” of the tree, she said. “Then, when they look up, all they can see is light.”