Austin's Zilker Holiday Tree Lighting Ceremony Scheduled

AUSTIN, TX — It's not even Halloween, and yet it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Austin. Austin Energy crews will be stringing lights to transform the Zilker moonlight tower into the holiday tree on Friday.

That's the 155-foot Zilker Holiday Tree — the centerpiece of a quintessentially Austin tradition — that decks out one of the moonlight towers popular in the late 19th century that were used to illuminate areas of the city at night. Such old-school structures have been preserved in the city as something of curiosity from a bygone age, no longer used for nighttime lighting but preserved as a symbol of an anachronistic yet aesthetically riveting implement of the past.

In Austin, the moonlight tower (also called moontower) at Zilker doubles as scaffolding, to a fashion, for stringing of holiday lights against an arborial-like structure to delight visitors gawking at the pretty lights. But alas, the actual "tree" lighting ceremony this year will be virtual given the coronavirus pandemic.

But even from a distance — in adherence to social distancing now part of our daily routines — the "tree" is quite a sight to behold. The first phase of the process to transform the tower into a lighted structure will be on Friday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., when Austin Energy crews will string up lights ahead of the holidays at Zilker Park, south of Barton Springs Road near Andrew Zilker Road.

In an advisory sent to Patch, a spokesperson for the utility said most of the bulbs on the Zilker Holiday Tree in 2019 were of the LED variety, except for the yellow ones, which were harder to find in stock. However, this year, all of the lights on the tree will be LED bulbs, the spokesperson wrote with palpable enthusiasm. "LEDs consume less electricity and are longer lasting," the spokesperson explained.

More fun facts: The tree is decorated with 39 strings of light, each containing 81 red, yellow, green and blue bulbs. The strategic placement of the yellow bulbs on each string gives the tree its distinctive and dizzying swirl pattern.

The utility spokesperson added that the moonlight tower in Zilker Park is one of the original 31 towers that provided the City of Austin its first urban lighting system in 1895. Only 17 of Austin’s original moonlight towers remain and serve as the only working moonlight towers in the world. Over the years, the moonlight towers and the Zilker Holiday Tree have become Austin icons and a beloved community tradition, the spokesperson correctly stated.

Once the lights are strung up, a virtual tree lighting ceremony will take place on Sunday, Nov. 29, at 6 p.m. The ceremony will be streamed on ATXN Channel 6 as well as the social media channels for Austin Parks and Recreation Department (PARD), City of Austin and Austin Energy.

The tree will be on display from Nov. 29 through Jan. 1, 2021, from 6 p.m. until midnight.
Due to the pandemic, on-site access will be assessed by the City of Austin and announced closer to the event date in order to work from the most current public health information available. For more information, visit the Austin Energy website.

Zilker holiday tree art contest winners

As in years past, the young winners from Park and Recreation Department's annual Zilker Holiday Tree art contest will be helping to flip the switch and light up the tree.

View this year’s winning art pieces

This year's winners are (drum roll, please):

Junior Division winners (5 to 7 years old)

• First Place: Neil Bhokare
• Second Place: Anna-Caterina Tsai
• Third Place: Anamaria Banda

Senior division winners (8 to 10 years old)

• First Place: Aaliyah Webb
• Second Place: Ava Wessels
• Third Place: Ayin Park

We may be living in uncertain times, but the Zilker Holiday Tree tradition lives on. The lovely, twinkling lights telegraphing the advent of the holidays will soon be switched on to suffuse us all — both young and old — with a sense of hope amid the darkness.