The fir in Town Plaza Park has stood at the corner of Main and North Santa Cruz since 1923, planted by the Los Gatos History Club back when the town's population was a fraction of what it is now. Every December, the same short walk from the sidewalk to the Plaza ends with a mayor's hand on a switch and a few hundred kids counting down. This year that tree turns on its lights for the 103rd time, and the ritual that follows it, the parade the next morning, hasn't changed shape in living memory. What has changed is what happens after. The gap between the parade weekend and the Kiwanis Club's Holiday Market, the one that used to snap shut within about seven days, has stretched to roughly double that this year. If you've lived here long enough to have a routine for December, that routine needs a rewrite.
The Weekend Everyone Already Plans Around
"Los Gatos in Lights" runs the same way it has for years. Festivities start around 5 p.m. on the Friday before the first Saturday of December, with the tree lighting itself timed for 6 p.m. sharp. Fisher Middle School's Strings and Encore Choir have performed at recent ceremonies, alongside The Harker School's Downbeat Show Choir, and the outgoing mayor typically uses the evening for one of the final duties of the term before handing the gavel to a successor. Santa shows up right after the switch flips.
The next morning belongs to the Los Gatos Children's Christmas/Holidays Parade, sponsored by the Los Gatos Lions Club alongside LGS Recreation and the Town of Los Gatos, with Los Gatos High School in the mix as well. The route runs down East Main Street and North Santa Cruz Avenue, and the most recent edition drew around 7,000 participants across 172 confirmed units, from marching bands to equestrian units to the Billy Jones Wildcat steam locomotive riding in on a flatbed trailer. The Grand Marshal is chosen through a community nomination process that closes this year on October 16, and if the sequence holds, this December's parade will be the 70th edition. It streams live through KCAT Public Media for anyone who can't get a curb spot in time.
That weekend is the version of the season most people already carry in their heads. It's the one photo op, one morning of marching bands, done by Sunday afternoon when the hop on hop off trolley finishes its run through town. What most residents haven't clocked yet is what comes after it.
Where the Calendar Used to Snap Back Together
Last December, the parade landed on Saturday, December 6. The Kiwanis Club of Los Gatos ran its Holiday Market on the Civic Center Lawn the following weekend, December 13 and 14, a two day artisan fair with fine wine, food trucks, and a Candy Cane Lane setup for kids. Proceeds went to local youth programs and the Live Oak Senior Nutrition Center, the same beneficiary the market has supported for years. Counted from parade Saturday to market Saturday, that's a seven day turnaround. Blink and you'd miss the gap. The whole season, tree lighting through market, wrapped inside about two weeks.
This year, the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce's own event listing puts the Holiday Market on December 20, 2026, at the same Civic Center Lawn address on East Main Street. Count forward from this December's parade Saturday and you land closer to fifteen days, not seven. The market has also shifted from a listed two day run to a single dated entry on the Chamber's calendar, a change from the Saturday-Sunday format the market has used in prior seasons.
Neither shift comes with an explanation attached to it in any public notice, which is exactly the kind of thing that slips past people who assume December here runs on autopilot. It doesn't. The town's civic calendar gets rebuilt every year by volunteers at the Lions Club, LGS Recreation, the Los Gatos Community Foundation, and the Kiwanis Club, and small scheduling choices they make ripple through how residents actually experience the month.
What the Extra Week Buys You
A market pushed toward December 20 sits five days from Christmas Eve instead of ten or twelve. That's not a cosmetic difference. It repositions the whole event from "early holiday shopping" to "last chance before the holiday," which changes who shows up and why. Families finishing their gift lists get one more local option instead of driving out to a mall. Vendors selling handmade goods get a shopping weekend that lines up with when people are actually buying, not just browsing. And the Live Oak Senior Nutrition Center, which depends on market proceeds, gets a fundraising date that lands closer to when charitable giving tends to spike anyway.
The gap in between isn't dead air either. Santa still keeps hours in Old Town near Salt & Straw in the days after the parade, and the trolley typically runs one more weekend before the market than it used to, giving residents a reason to come downtown even when nothing official is scheduled. Some households fill the middle stretch with a drive out to Vasona Lake County Park for its holiday light displays, a short trip from most Los Gatos neighborhoods and a natural complement to a quieter week downtown.
If you're mapping out your own December, the shape now looks like this:
- Friday before the first Saturday in December: Los Gatos in Lights tree lighting, Town Plaza Park, festivities from 5 p.m., lighting at 6 p.m.
- The following Saturday: Children's Christmas/Holidays Parade down East Main and North Santa Cruz Avenue, plan to be parked early
- That Sunday: Holiday trolley runs through town, no reservation needed
- A standalone weekend roughly two weeks after the parade: Santa's Old Town appearances continue in the interim
- December 20, 2026: Kiwanis Holiday Market, Civic Center Lawn, 110 East Main Street
That's a longer season than the compressed two week version most longtime residents remember, and it means the month rewards a little planning instead of one big weekend on the calendar.
A Town That Rebuilds Its Own Traditions Every Year
None of this is a complaint about the town's planning. If anything, it's a reminder that the traditions that feel permanent, the tree that's been lit since 1923, the parade route that hasn't moved, are still assembled fresh every year by the same handful of civic organizations that have always run them. When the Kiwanis Club moves its market by a week or drops it to a single day, that's a choice made by volunteers weighing vendor logistics and fundraising timing, not a change imposed from outside. It's a small piece of evidence for something true about Los Gatos more broadly: the character of this place isn't handed down from a rulebook. It gets rebuilt, decision by decision, by the same overlapping set of neighbors, school groups, and service clubs every single year.
For anyone who already calls this town home, the practical takeaway is simple. Don't assume December collapses into one tidy weekend the way it used to. Pencil in two separate outings this year, not one, and treat the space between them as an unplanned bonus rather than a scheduling oversight.
If you're weighing what else has shifted in Los Gatos this year, from the neighborhoods people are watching to the pace of the local market, our Los Gatos neighborhood guide is a good place to keep looking. And if a longtime home here is ever part of your own plans, Knight Roberts Real Estate is glad to talk through what that looks like, on your timeline, with the same attention to detail we bring to a town calendar.
