SILVERDALE – Hundreds of people gathered outside Silverdale Antiques for the 61st annual Christmas tree lighting.
Santa Claus arrived in a fire engine to greet the children. Shortly afterward, Santa and Miss Silverdale 2015 Madison Gilmore led the crowd to count down the seconds for the tree lighting.
Dozens of children line up to get a glimpse of Santa Claus as he steps out of a firetruck in Silverdale Nov. 28.
Silverdale’s 131-foot-tall Christmas Tree shines after being turned on Nov. 28. The tree has 12 strings of light. Each string has 34 bulbs for a total of about 288 lights.
Brothers’ work helps keep Christmas tree aglow
Brothers Rich and Roland Arper are two of the many folks who work to keep the tree’s colors shining brightly for the winter season.
“We’ve worked on it, oh golly I’m guessing 20-25 years that we’ve been participating and doing it,” said Roland, who is a member of the Silverdale Dandy Lions. Rich is with the Silverdale Rotarians.
The Arper brothers are carrying on a tradition put in place by their father, Bob, who was a Silverdale Rotarian, Rotarian Hank Mann, and Lions Club member Bill Seelow.
Rich said the tree was first lit in 1954.
“I was probably there then but I don’t remember it,” Rich said of the first lighting.
Rich recalled Seelow and Mann as working on the tree until about 2006, when they both became ill.
“Those two guys for years just did basically almost everything,” Rich said. “They took care of it for years and years.”
At that point, everyone else had to step in and figure out how Seelow and Mann had done their work, Rich said.
Keeping the tree lit is a team effort. About a dozen members from the Lions Club, Kiwanis and Rotary club work to repair the lights in September and October. They take down the lines, tape wires, and replace light bulbs and sockets. This year, Roland said, they took down five lines of lights from the front for inspection.
“They stay up all year,” Roland said of the Christmas lights.
Additionally, Roland said a crew of six to eight kids from the Kitsap County Juvenile Detention Facility work to clear brush from the area.
Roland said the bulbs are 25-watt incandescents, “Just like the lightbulbs you’d put into a lamp in your house.”
Rich said the tree had 12 strings of light. Each string had 34 bulbs for a total of about 408 lights.
“Some years we’ve got to take the star down,” Rich said, which is more difficult than the rest of the lights due to the weight and size of the star.
Two different types of LED lights have been explored as replacements for the incandescent lights.
“The challenge we have is if we go to LED, the electrician tells us they’re actually a heavier bulb. The wiring won’t support the heavier bulb,” Roland said.
That would mean completely rewiring the tree in order to support the extra weight. The wiring would be hand-made, in lengths of 140 feet.
One issue with commercially available LED lights, Roland said, was whether or not they would be bright enough to see from a distance.
The cost of the LED bulbs, which Roland said was $4 per bulb, is also a factor.
“We put some in several years ago and they weren’t very bright at all. And they were quite small. We got a new one this year that’s a full-size bulb but it seems like it is heavy because the base of an LED has some kind of electronics in it,” Rich said.
