L.A. County Holiday Celebration's Most Dedicated Fans Await Its Return to In-Person
Editor's note: As of December 20,2021, the live audience portion has been canceled due to an abundance of caution given the recent uptick of COVID-19 cases. The program will still be broadcast on PBS SoCal and streamed on PBSsocal.org, KCET.org and holidaycelebration.org as previously announced.
On a typical Christmas Eve, celebrants file into The Music Center's Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the L.A. County Holiday Show, a festive spectacular of the diverse cultures that make up California's most populous county. Last year wasn't like any Christmas Eve in modern history, confining our holiday celebrations to our households, and the L.A. County Holiday Show followed suit with a filmed performance broadcast to television sets across the region. But this year? The lights are back on. The L.A. County Holiday Show was founded in 1959 by the late Kenneth Hahn, who served as the county's Second District supervisor from 1952 to 1992.
That year, he raised funds for a free Christmas Eve concert to take place at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena at Expo Park. Though the arena has since been demolished and replaced with the Banc of California Stadium, it was brand new back then. President Richard Nixon had just dedicated the 15,000-capacity arena to U.S. Armed Forces Veterans in an opening ceremony on Independence Day.
Perfect Attendance
That Christmas Eve, Richard Niederberg hopped on a bus and rode it to the arena. He was just six years old, but keen to catch the day's festivities.
In those early days, he remembers watching Supervisor Hahn and his brother play the piano. "Sometimes they played badly, but it was still good because it was a homemade show," Niederberg recalled with a laugh. "It was much smaller then than it is now, but it made me feel good." Niederberg had a voracious appetite for the arts. He'd go to operas, ballets, and "long-hair stuff my parents didn't approve of." But the holiday show soon became an annual tradition, and Niederberg became a familiar sight at the L.A. County Holiday showFrom the arena, he followed the show to the new Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1964, where it's remained to this day. Dorothy Buffum Chandler had campaigned to build the performance venue for nine years, raising $19 million in private funds, the equivalentof about $170.3 million today. She was relentless. In Dennis McDougal's book "Privileged Son: The Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty," it's revealed she would occasionally bully the Hollywood elite into donating more and more. What's fascinating, however, is that this one free holiday show played no small part in the Pavilion's opening. As a condition of his support on the project, Hahn requested that the building be free to the public one day each year. Chandler agreed and that day became Christmas Eve. The Holiday Show has remained at the Pavilion ever since. KCET began televising the performance in 1965 — a year in which it went on for a grand seven hours. The following year, it lasted 12. These days, it's a tighter three hours. Meanwhile, Niederberg would grow up, become an attorney, then a judge, then retire from the bench after 25 years. In all that time, he's attended the Holiday Show every year except for last year, of course, when he watched the pandemic-safe, pre-recorded version on TV. At this point, he's a creature of habit with his routine down pat. He takes the Metro B (Red) Line and arrives early, so he can find his seat, get comfortable and read through the program. He always sits in the second row, directly behind the stage manager, and stays for the entire performance.
"The manager has to get up to reset things, so I would stop people from taking their seat," he said. "And [I knew] no one would be in front of me." Sometimes he invites friends to come along, "but I'm going whether they're going or not," he said. "I don't need somebody with me and of course, I don't want to talk to somebody while I'm seeing the show."
This dedication has earned Niederberg the opportunity to take in hundreds of performances across six decades. His favorites are often dance and large choral numbers, but his absolute number one is always the closing act: "Silent Night," performed by a mariachi band. For future years, Neiderberg has a suggestion. "It'd be nice if there was some magic."
Behind the Lens
Emerson Chen has been attending the Holiday Show since 2012, but enjoys a much different view. Chen, who graduated from Harvard Law School in the 1970s, is now a freelance photographer. Every year, he volunteers to shoot the show.
"From my eyes and camera lens, I can see people in music and dance [who] all have different styles and talents," he said.
He typically uses two cameras, two to three lenses, a tripod and a monopod to shoot. Dance performances are among his favorite to photograph.
See a few of Emerson's photos in the gallery below:
While Chen didn't watch the pre-recorded performance in 2020 simply because he didn't know about it. This year, fans like Chen will be prepared. While performers are allowed back in the venue, in-person attendance has been cancelled due to rising COVID-19 cases. Guests can tune in on PBS SoCal, KCET or watch online to enjoy the festivities.
