The perfect tree

Owen Ho travels around with a scratch pad in his car to jot down ideas for the annual Honolulu City Lights display, which this year opens Saturday. He is the lead designer for the downtown holiday tradition and has been involved in the event for nearly three decades.

In the early years of the celebration, the towering tree was draped only with colorful lights — no ornaments. When Ho took over, he wanted to make things more elaborate. "We needed the tree to look as good during the day as it does at night," said Ho, who makes his living as a retail display designer.

So each year, oversize ornaments and other decorations are added.

The trees that grace the Honolulu Hale lawn during the holiday season must be at least 65 feet tall. "It needs to be straight, have a nice shape and not too many holes," said Sheri Kajiwara, Honolulu City Lights coordinator. Kajiwara works on the Christmas display for three months, but her full-time position is director of the Department of Customer Service.

The search for the perfect tree starts in October, and once found, arrangements are made with the property owner, who is often happy to have it removed. The tree has to be accessible for cutting and hauling away using a crane and trailer truck.

Kajiwara says the city has considered planting a permanent tree on the lawn, but there are too many considerations. "It would be small for many years and eventually it would be too big. If the wind blows too much, it may not grow straight," she said.

"The donors want us to use their tree. We provide free labor to have the tree cut down and hauled away."

This year’s tree, a 65-foot Norfolk pine, was taken from David Carter’s yard in Pearl City.

One of the most difficult aspects of dealing with a jumbo tree is creating everything to scale. "We started making our own ornaments," Ho said.

"We try to make things as simple as possible." The ornaments on the bottom boughs are about 5 feet in diameter, and at the top about 1 foot.

The ornaments are used for three years before a new theme is chosen.

"We’ve had gingerbread people and each had its own personality. We made construction paper leis with Styrofoam flowers. We used swimming noodles to represent the straw in between the flowers," he said. "When making candy, we used clear vinyl shower curtains. Everything needs to be lightweight."

This is the second year of the "Santa’s Underwater Adventure" theme, featuring glittery fish, eels, seashells and an 8-foot octopus.

Some of the creatures have island place names such as Kailua and Nanakuli carved into their foam figures. Colorful exercise balls wrapped in fishnets will be placed inside the tree limbs to represent bubbles.

The tree is decorated with between 75,000 and 100,000 lights and 400 to 600 ornaments.

Ho is making more ornaments for this year and repairing the sea critters that may have been damaged in storage.

According to Kajiwara, it takes between 15 and 20 people to secure and install the tree. There are six electricians preparing the connections and about 12 workers are needed to place the ornaments on the tree, starting from the bottom and working their way up.

"The mayor places the tree top on last; that’s the final touch on the tree," Ho said.

Ho is afraid of heights, which presents another challenge. "When they put the ornaments on the tree (using the crane), I stay on the ground," he said.

Once the interior decorations are in place, a net of lights surrounds the tree. The sea creature ornaments are placed last.

Nearby, new figures — humuhumunukunukuapuaa — will share space with Shaka Santa and Tutu Mele at the Honolulu Hale fountain, spouting water and shooting laser lights.

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